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IF I MAY 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

NOT THAT IT MATTERS 

Named by Life in its issue of 
October 28, 1920, as one of the best 
six current books. 

"No better book for vacation read- 
ing." — Review. 

E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 



IF I MAY 



BY 

A. A. MILNE 

AUTHOR OF "not THAT IT MATTERS," ETC. 




NEW YORK 

E. p. DUTTON ^ COMPANY 

68i FIFTH AVENUE 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, 

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 









.t^ 



Q)"!.A627592 



NOV -5 1921 



Printed in the XTnited States of America 



These essays are reprinted, with such alterations 
and additions as seemed proper, from The Sphere, 
The Outlook, The Daily Neivs, The Sunday Ex- 
Press (London) and Vanity Fair (New York). 

A. A. M. 



CONTENTS 



The Case for the Artist 
A London Garden . . 
The Game of Kings . . 
Fixtures and Fittings 

Experts 

The Robinson Tradition 
Getting Things Done . 
Christmas Games 
The Mathematical Mind 
Going Out to Dinner . 
The Etiquette of Escape 
Geographical Research 
Children's Plays . . . 
The Road to Knowledge 
A Man of Property . . 
An Ordnance Map . . 
The Lord Mayor . . . 
The Holiday Problem . 
The Burlington Arcade 



♦ • • • :^ 



PAGE 

X 

S 
13 
19 

24 
29 

35 
40 

45 
50 
58 
63 
6S 
74 
79 
84 
90 
96 

lOI 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

State Lotteries .,,... io6 

The Record Lie in 

Wedding Bells ii6 

Public Opinion . 124 

The Honour of Your Country 129 

A Village Celebration 137 

A Train of Thought 144 

Melodrama 149 

A Lost Masterpiece 155 

A Hint for Next Christmas 160 

The Future 169 

The Largest Circulation 174 

The Watson Touch 179 

Some Old Companions 184 

A Haunted House 189 

Round the World and Back 195 

The State of the Theatre 200 

The Fires of Autumn 207 

Not Guilty 212 

A Digression . . . v > > . 217 

High Finance c«; 222 

Secret Papers 229 



IF I MAY 



IF I MAY 



The Case for the Artist 

BY an "artist" I mean Shakespeare and Me 
and Bach and Myself and Velasquez and 
Phidias, and even You if you have ever written 
four lines on the sunset in somebody's album, or 
modelled a Noah's Ark for your little boy in 
plasticine. Perhaps we have not quite reached 
the heights where Shakespeare stands, but we 
are on his track. Shakespeare can be representa- 
tive of all of us, or Velasquez if you prefer him. 
One of them shall be President of our United 
Artists' Federation. Let us, then, consider what 
place in the scheme of things our federation can 
claim. 

Probably we artists have all been a little modest 
about ourselves lately. During the war we asked 
ourselves gloomily what use we were to the State 
compared with the noble digger of coals, the 
much-to-be-reverenced maker of boots, and the 



2 If I May 

god-like grower of wheat. Looking at the pic- 
tures in the illustrated papers of brawny, half- 
dressed men pushing about blocks of red-hot 
iron, we have told ourselves that these heroes 
were the pillars of society, and that we were just 
an incidental decoration. It was a wonder that we 
were allowed to live. And now in these days of 
strikes, when a single union of manual workers 
can hold up the rest of the nation, it is a bitter 
reflection to us that, if we were to strike, the 
country would go on its way quite happily, and 
nine-tenths of the population would not even 
know that we had downed our pens and brushes. 

If there is any artist who has been depressed 
by such thoughts as these, let him take comfort. 
We are all right. 

I made the discovery that we were all right by 
studying the life of the bee. All that I knew 
about bees until yesterday was derived from that 
great naturalist, Dr. Isaac Watts. In common 
with every one who has been a child I knew that 
the insect in question improved each shining hour 
by something honey something something every 
something flower. I had also heard that bees 
could not sting you if you held your breath, a 
precaution which would make conversation by the 
herbaceous border an affair altogether too spas- 



The Case for the Artist 3 

modic; and, finally, that in any case the same bee 
could only sting you once — though, apparently, 
there was no similar provision of Nature's that 
the same person could not be stung twice. 

Well, that was all that I knew about bees until 
yesterday. I used to see them about the place 
from time to time, busy enough, no doubt, but 
really no busier than I was ; and as they were not 
much interested in me they had no reason to com- 
plain that I was not much interested in them. But 
since yesterday, when I read a book which dealt 
fully, not only with the public life of the bee, but 
with the most intimate details of its private life, 
I have looked at them with a new interest and 
a new sympathy. For there is no animal which 
does not get more out of life than the pitiable in- 
sect which Dr. Watts holds up as an example to 
us. 

Hitherto, it may be, you have thought of the 
bee as an admirable and industrious insect, mem- 
ber of a model community which worked day and 
night to but one end — the well-being of the com- 
ing race. You knew perhaps that it fertilized the 
flowers, but you also knew that the bee didn't 
know; you were aware that, if any bee deliber- 
ately went about trying to improve your delphin- 
iums instead of gathering honey for the State, 



4 If I May 

it would be turned down promptly by the other 
workers. For nothing is done in the hive without 
this one utilitarian purpose. Even the drones 
take their place in the scheme of things; a minor 
place in the stud; and when the next generation is 
assured, and the drones cease to be useful and can 
now only revert to the ornamental, they are ruth- 
lessly cast out. 

It comes, then, to this. The bee devotes its 
whole life to preparing for the next generation. 
But what is the next generation going to do? 
It is going to spend its whole life preparing for 
the third generation . . . and so on for ever. 

An admirable community, the moralists tell us. 
Poor moralists ! To miss so much of the joy of 
life; to deny oneself the pleasure (to mention 
only one among many) of reclining lazily on 
one's back in a snap-dragon, watching the little 
white clouds sail past upon a sea of blue; to miss 
these things for no other reason than that the 
next generation may also have an opportunity of 
missing them — is that admirable? What do the 
bees think that they are doing? If they live a 
life of toil and self-sacrifice merely in order that 
the next generation may live a life of equal toil 
and self-sacrifice, what has been gained? Ask 
the next bee you meet what it thinks it is doing 



The Case for the Artist 5 

in this world, and the only answer it can give 
you is, "Keeping up the supply of bees." Is that 
an admirable answer? How much more admir- 
able if it could reply that it was eschewing all 
pleasure and living the life of a galley-slave in 
order that the next generation might have leisure 
to paint the poppy a more glorious scarlet. But 
no. The next generation is going at it just as 
hard for the same unproductive end; it has no 
wish to leave anything behind it — a new colour, 
a new scent, a new idea. It has one object only 
in this world — more bees. Could any scheme of 
life be more sterile ? 

Having come to this conclusion about the bee, 
I took fresh courage. I saw at once that it was 
the artist in Man which made him less contemp- 
tible than the Bee. That god-like person the 
grower of wheat assumed his proper level. Bread 
may be necessary to existence, but what is the 
use of existence if you arc merely going to employ 
it in making bread? True, the farmer makes 
bread, not only for himself, but for the miner; 
and the miner produces coal — not only for him- 
self, but for the farmer; and the farmer also 
produces bread for the maker of boots, who 
produces boots, not only for himself, but for 
the farmer and the miner. But you are still get- 



\ 



6 If I May 

ting no further. It is the Life of the Bee over 
again, with no other object in it but mere exist- 
ence. If this were all, there would be nothing to 
write on our tombstones but "Born 1800; Died 
1880. He lived till then." 

But it is not all, because — and here I strike my 
breast proudly — because of us artists. Not only 
can we write on Shakespeare's tomb, "He wrote 
Hamlet" or "He was not for an age, but for all 
time," but we can write on a contemporary baker's 
tomb, "He provided bread for the man who 
wrote Hamlet" and on a contemporary butcher's 
tomb, "He was not only for himself, but for 
Shakespeare." We perceive, in fact, that the 
only matter upon which any worker, other than 
the artist, can congratulate himself, whether he 
be manual-worker, brain-worker, surgeon, judge, 
or politician, is that he is helping to make the 
world tolerable for the artist. It is only the artist 
who will leave anything behind him. He is the 
fighting-man, the man who counts; the others are 
merely the Army Service Corps of civilization. 
A world without its artists, a world ot bees, 
would be as futile and as meaningless a thing as 
an army composed entirely of the A.S.C. 

Possibly you put in a plea here for the explorer 
and the scientist. The explorer perhaps may 



The Case for the Artist 7 

stand alone. His discovery of a peak in Darien 
is something in itself, quite apart from the happy 
possibility that Keats may be tempted to bring it 
into a sonnet. Yes, if a Beef-Essence-Merchant 
has only provided sustenance for an Explorer he 
has not lived in vain, however much the poets 
and the painters recoil from his wares. But of 
the scientist I am less certain. I fancy that his 
invention of the telephone (for instance) can 
only be counted to his credit because it has 
brought the author into closer touch with his pub- 
lisher. 

So we artists (yes, and explorers) may be of 
good faith. They may try to pretend, these 
others, in their little times of stress, that we are 
nothing — decorative, inessential; that it is they 
who make the world go round. This will not 
upset us. We could not live without them; true. 
But (a much more bitter thought) they would 
have no reason for living at all, were it not for us. 



A London Garden 

I HAVE always wanted a garden of my own. 
Other people's gardens are all very well, but 
the visitor never sees them at their best. He 
comes down in June, perhaps, and says something 
polite about the roses. "You ought to have seen 
them last year," says his host disparagingly, and 
the visitor represses with difficulty the retort, 
"You ought to have asked me down to see them 
last year." Or, perhaps, he comes down in Au- 
gust, and lingers for a moment beneath the fig- 
tree. "Poor show of figs," says the host, "I 
don't know what's happened to them. Now we 
had a record crop of raspberries. Never seen 
them so plentiful before." And the visitor has 
to console himself with the thought of the rasp- 
berries which he has never seen, and will probably 
miss again next year. It is not very comforting. 
Give me, therefore, a garden of my own. Let 
me grow my own flowers, and watch over them 
from seedhood to senility. Then shall I miss 
nothing of their glory, and when visitors come I 

8 



A London Garden 9 

can impress them with my stories of the wonder- 
ful show of groundsel which we had last year. 

For the moment I am contenting myself with 
groundsel. To judge by the present state of the 
garden, the last owner must have prided himself 
chiefly on his splendid show of canaries. Indeed, 
it would not surprise me to hear that he referred 
to his garden as "the back-yard." This would 
take the heart out of anything which was trying 
to flower there, and it is only natural that, with 
the exception of the three groundsel beds, the 
garden is now a wilderness. Perhaps "wilder- 
ness" gives you a misleading impression of space, 
the actual size of the pleasaunce being about two 
hollyhocks by one, but it is the correct word to 
describe the air of neglect which hangs over the 
place. However, I am going to alter that. 

With a garden of this size, though, one has to 
be careful. One cannot decide lightly upon a 
croquet-lawn here, an orchard there, and a rock- 
ery in the corner; one has to go all out for the 
one particular thing, whether it is the last hoop 
and the stick of a croquet-lawn, a mulberry-tree, 
or an herbaceous border. Which do we want 
most — a fruit garden, a flower garden, or a water 
garden? Sometimes I think fondly of a water 
garden, with a few perennial gold-fish flashing 



10 If I May 

swiftly across it, and ourselves walking idly by the 
margin and pointing them out to our visitors; 
and then I realize sadly that, by the time an ade- 
quate margin has been provided for ourselves and 
our visitors, there will be no room left for the 
gold-fish. 

At the back of my garden I have a high brick 
wall. To whom the bricks actually belong I 
cannot say, but at any rate I own the surface rights 
on this side of it. One of my ideas is to treat it 
as the back cloth of a stage, and paint a vista 
on it. A long avenue of immemorial elms, lead- 
ing up to a gardener's lodge at the top of the wall 
— I mean at the end of the avenue — might create 
a pleasing impression. My workroom leads out 
into the garden, and I have a feeling that, if the 
door of this room were opened, and then hastily 
closed again on the plea that I mustn't be dis- 
turbed, a visitor might obtain such a glimpse of 
the avenue and the gardener's lodge as would con- 
vince him that I had come into property. He 
might even make an offer for the estate, if he 
were set upon a country house in the heart of 
London. 

But you have probably guessed already the diffi- 
culty in the way of my vista. The back wall 
extends into the gardens of the householders on 



A London Garden ii 

each side of me. They might refuse to co-operate 
with me; they might insist on retaining the blank 
ughness of theirs walls, or endeavouring (as they 
endeavour now, I believe) to grow some unenter- 
prising creeper up them; with the result that my 
vista would fail to create the necessary illusion 
when looked at from the side. This would mean 
that our guests would have to remain in one po- 
sition, and that even in this position they would 
have to stand to attention — a state of things 
which might mar their enjoyment of our hospi- 
tality. Until, then, our neighbours give me a free 
hand with their segments of the wall, the vista 
must remain a beautiful dream. 

However, there are other possibilities. Since 
there is no room in the garden for a watchdog 
and a garden, it might be a good idea to paint 
a phosphorescent and terrifying watchdog on the 
wall. Perhaps a watchlion would be even more 
terrifying — and, presumably, just as easy to paint. 
Any burglar would be deterred if he came across 
a lion suddenly in the back garden. One way or 
another, it should be possible to have something 
a little more interesting than mere bricks at the 
end of the estate. 

And if the worst comes to the worst — if it is 
found that no flowers (other than groundsel) 



12 If I May 

will flourish in my garden, owing to lack of soil 
or lack of sun — then the flowers must be painted 
on the walls. This would have its advantages, 
for we should waste no time over the early and 
uninteresting stages of the plant, but depict it at 
once in its full glory. And we should keep our 
garden up to date. When delphiniums went out 
of season, we should rub them out and give you 
chrysanthemums; and if an untimely storm up- 
rooted the chrysanthemums, in an hour or two we 
should have a wonderful show of dahlias to take 
their place. And we should still have the floor- 
space free for a sundial, or — if you insist on 
exercise — for the last hoop and the stick of a full- 
sized croquet-lawn. 



The Game of Kings 

I DO not claim to be an authority on either 
the history or the practice of chess, but, as 
the poet Gray observed when he saw his old 
school from a long way off, it is sometimes an ad- 
vantage not to know too much of one's sub- 
ject. The imagination can then be exercised more 
effectively. So when I am playing Capablanca 
(or old Robinson) for the championship of the 
home pastures, my thoughts are not fixed exclu- 
sively upon the "mate" which is threatening; 
they wander off into those enchanted lands of 
long ago, when flesh-and-blood knights rode at 
stone-built castles, and thin-lipped bishops, all 
smiles and side-long glances, plotted against the 
kings who ventured to oppose them. This is the 
real fascination of chess. 

You observe that I speak of castles, not of 
rooks. I do not know whence came this custom 
of calling the most romantic piece on the board 
by the name of a very ordinary bird, but I, at 
least, will not be a party to it. I refuse to sur- 

13 



14 If I May 

render the portcullis and the moat, the bastion 
and the well-manned towers, which were the fea- 
tures of every castle with which hitherto I have 
played, in order to take the field with allies so 
unromantic as a brace of rooks. You may tell 
me that "rook" is a corruption of this or that 
word, meaning something which has never laid 
an egg in its life. It may be so, but in that case 
you cannot blame me for continuing to call it the 
castle which its shape proclaims it. 

Knowing nothing of the origin of the game, 
I can tell myself stories about it. That it was 
Invented by a woman is obvious, for why else 
should the queen be the most powerful piece of 
them all? She lived, this woman, in a priest- 
ridden land, but she had no love for the Church. 
Neither bland white bishop nor crooked-smiling 
black bishop did she love ; that is why she made 
them move sideways. Yet she could not deny 
them their power. They were as powerful as 
the gallant young knight who rode past her win- 
dow singing to battle, where he swooped upon 
the enemy impetuously from this side and that, 
heedless of the obstacles in the way, or worked 
two of them into such a position that, though one 
might escape, the other was doomed to bite the 
dust. Yet the bishop, man of peace though he 



The Game of Kings 15 

proclaimed himself, was as powerful as he, but 
not so powerful as a baron In his well-fortified 
castle. For sometimes there were places beyond 
the Influence of the Church, if one could reach 
them in safety; though when the Church hunted 
In couples, the king's priest and the queen's priest 
out together, then there was no certain refuge, 
and one must sally upon them bravely and run 
the risk of being excommunicated. 

No, she did not love the Church. Sometimes 
I think that she was herself a queen, who had 
suffered at the hands of the bishops; and, just 
as you or I put our enemies into a book, thereby 
gaining much private satisfaction even though 
they do not recognize themselves, so she made a 
game of her enemies and enjoyed her revenge In 
secret. But if she were a queen, then she was a 
queen-mother, and the king was not her husband 
but her little son. This would account for the 
perpetual Intrigues against him, and the fact that 
he was so powerless to aid himself. Probably the 
enemy was too strong for him in the end, and he 
and his mother were taken into captivity together. 
It was In prison that she invented the royal game, 
and the young king amused himself by carving 
out the first rough pieces. 

But was she a queen? Sometimes I think that 



i6 If I May 

I have the story wrong; for what queen in those 
days would have assented to a proposition so 
democratic as that a man-at-arms (a "pawn" in 
the language of the unromantic) could rise by his 
own exertions to the dignity of Royalty itself? 
But if she were a waiting-maid in love with the 
king's own man-at-arms, then it would be natural 
that she should set no limit to her ambitions for 
him. The man-at-arms crowned would be in 
keeping with her most secret dreams. 

These are the things of which I think when I 
push my king's man-at-arms two leagues forward. 
A game of chess is a romance spoilt when it is 
described in that dull official notation "P to K4, 
Kt to KB3"; a story should be woven around it. 
One of these days, perhaps, I shall tell the story 
of my latest defeat. Lewis Carroll had some 
such intention when he began Alice Through the 
Looking Glass, but he went at it half-heartedly. 
Besides, being a clergyman and writing as he did 
for children, he was handicapped; he dared not 
introduce the bishops. I shall have no such fears, 
and my story will be serious. 

Consider for a moment the romance which 
underlies the most ordinary game. You push out 
the king's pawn and your opponent does the 
same. It is plain (is it not?) that these are the 



The Game of Kings 17 

heralds, meeting at the border-line between the 
two kingdoms — Ivoria and Ebonia, let us say. 
There I have my first chapter: The history of 
the dispute, the challenge by Ivoria, the accep- 
tance of the challenge by Ebonia. Chapter Two 
describes the sallying forth of the knights — "Kt 
to KB3, Kt to QB3," In the next chapter the 
bishop gains the queen's ear and suggests that he 
should take the field. He is no fighter, but he 
has the knack of excommunicating. The queen, 
a young and beautiful widow, with an infant son, 
consents ("B to QB4"), and set about removing 
her child to a place of safety. She invokes the 
aid of Roqueblanc, an independent chieftain, who, 
spurred on by love for her, throws all his forces 
on to her side, offering at the same time his well- 
guarded fastness as a sanctuary for her boy. 
("Castles.") Then the queen musters all her 
own troops and leads them into battle by the side 
of the Baron Roqueblanc. . . . 

But I must not tell you the whole story now. 
You can imagine for yourself some of the more 
exciting things which happen. You can picture, 
for instance, that vivid chapter in which the young 
king, at a moment when his very life is threatened 
by an Ebonian baron. Is saved by the self-sacri- 
fices of Roqueblanc, who hurls himself in front 



l8 If I May 

of the royal youth's person and hixuself falls a 
victim, to be avenged immediately by a watchful 
man-at-arms. You can follow, if you will, the 
further adventures of that man-at-arms, up to 
that last chapter when he marries the still beau- 
tiful queen, and henceforward acts in her name, 
taking upon himself a power similar to her own. 
In fact, you can write the boolc yourself. But 
if you do not care to do this, let me beg you at 
least to bring a little imagination to the next 
game which you play. Then whether you win or 
(as is more lilcely) you lose, you will at least 
be worthy of the Game of Kings. 



Fixtures and Fittings 

THERE was once a young man who decided 
to be a poodle-clipper. He felt that he had 
a natural bent for it, and he had been told that 
a fashionable poodle-clipper could charge his own 
price for his services. But his father urged him 
to seek another profession. "It is an uncertain 
life, poodle-clipping," he said. "To begin with, 
very few people keep poodles at all. Of these 
few, only a small proportion wants its poodles 
clipped. And, of this small proportion, a still 
smaller proportion is likely to want its poodles 
clipped by you!' So the young man decided to 
be a hair-dresser instead. 

I thought of this story the other day when I 
was bargaining with a house-agent about "fix- 
tures," and I decided that no son of mine should 
become a curtain-pole manufacturer. I suppose 
that the price of a curtain-rod (pole or perch) 
is only a few shiUings, and, once made, it remains 
in a house for ever. Tenants come and go, new 
landlords buy and sell, but the old brass rod 

19 



20 If I May 

stays firm at the top of the window, supporting 
curtain after curtain. How many new sets are 
made in a year? No more, it would seem, than 
the number of new houses built. Far better, then 
to manufacture an individual possession like a 
tooth-brush, which has the additional advantage 
of wearing out every few months. 

But from the consumer's point of view, a cur- 
tain-rod is a pleasant thing. He has the satis- 
faction of feeling that, having once bought it, 
he has bought it for the rest of his life. He may 
change his house and with it his fixtures, but 
there is no loss on the brass part of the transac- 
tion, however much there may be on the bricks 
and mortar. What he pays out with one hand, he 
takes in with the other. Nor is his property 
subject to the ordinary mischances of life. There 
was an historic character who "lost the big drum," 
but he would become even more historic who had 
lost a curtain-rod, and neither parlour-maid nor 
cat is ever likely to wear a guilty conscience over 
the breaking of one. 

I have not yet discovered, in spite of my recent 
familiarity with house-agents, the difference be- 
tween a fixture and a fitting. It is possible that 
neither word has any virtue without the other, as 
is the case with "spick" and "span." One has 



Fixtures and Fittings 21 

to be both; however dapper, one would never be 
described as a span gentleman. In the same way 
it may be that a curtain-rod or an electric light 
is never just a fixture or a fitting, but always "in- 
cluded in the fixtures and fittings." Then there 
is a distinction, apparently, between a "landlord's 
fixture" and a "tenant's fixture," which is rather 
subtle. A fire-dog is a landlord's fixture; so is a 
door-plate. If you buy a house you get the fire- 
dogs and the door-plates thrown in, which seems 
unnecessarily generous. I can understand the 
landlord deciding to throw in the walls and the 
roof, because he couldn't do much with them if 
you refused to take them, but it is a mystery 
why he should include a door-plate, which can 
easily be removed and sold to somebody else. 
And if a door-plate, why not a curtain-rod? A 
curtain-rod is a necessity to the incoming tenant; 
a door-plate is merely a luxury for the grubby- 
fingered to help them to keep the paint clean. 
One might be expected to bring one's own door- 
plate with one, according to the size of one's 
hand. 

For the whole idea of a fixture or fitting can 
only be that it is something about which there 
can be no individual taste. We furnish a house 
according to our own private fancy; the "fixtures" 



22 If I May 

are the furnishings in regard to which we are 
prepared to accept the general fancy. The other 
man's curtain-rod, though easily detachable and 
able to fit a hundred other windows, is a fixture; 
his carpet-as-planned (to use the delightful lan- 
guage of the house-agent), though securely nailed 
down and the wrong size for any other room but 
this, is not a fixture. Upon some such reasoning 
the first authorized schedule of fixtures and fit- 
tings must have been made out. 

It seems a pity that it has not been extended. 
There are other things than curtain-rods and 
electric-light bulbs which might be left behind in 
the old house and picked up again in the new. 
The silver cigarette-box, which we have all had 
as a birthday or wedding present, might safely 
be handed over to the incoming tenant, in the 
certainty that another just like it will be waiting 
for us in our next house. True, it will have dif- 
ferent initials on it, but that will only make it the 
more interesting, our own having become fa- 
tiguing to us by this time. Possibly this sort of 
thing has already been done in an unofficial way 
among neighbors. By mutual agreement they 
leave their aspidistras and their "Maiden's 
Prayer" behind them. It saves trouble and ex- 
pense in the moving, which is an important thing 



Fixtures and Fittings 23 

in these days, and there would always be the hope 
that the next aspidistra might be on the eve of 
flowering or laying eggs, or whatever it is that 
its owner expects from it. 



Experts 

THE man in front of the fire was telling us a 
story about his wife and a bottle of claret. 
He had taken her to the best restaurant in Paris 
and had introduced her to a bottle of the famous 
Chateau Whatsitsname, 1320 (or thereabouts), 
a wine absolutely priceless — although the manage- 
ment, with its customary courtesy, had allowed 
him to pay a certain amount for it. Not realiz- 
ing that it was actually the famous Whatsitsname, 
she had drunk it in the ordinary way, neither 
holding it up to the light and saying, "Ah, there's 
a wine 1" nor rolling it round the palate before 
swallowing. On the next day they went to a com- 
monplace restaurant and drank a local and con- 
temporary vintage at five francs the bottle, of 
similar colour but very different temperament. 
When she had finished her glass, she said hesi- 
tatingly, "Of course, I don't know anything about 
wine, and I dare say I'm quite wrong, but I can't 
help feeling that the claret we had last night was 
better than this." 

24 



Experts 25 

The man in front of the fire was rather amused 
by this, as were most of his audience. For my- 
self, I felt that the lady demanded my admiration 
rather than my amusement. Without the assist- 
ance of the labels, many of us might have de- 
cided that it was the five-franc vintage which was 
the better wine. She didn't. Indeed, I am in- 
clined to read more into the story than is per- 
haps there; I believe that she had misunderstood 
her husband, and had thought that the second 
bottle was the famous, aged, and priceless Cha- 
teau Whatsitsname, and that, in spite of this, she 
gave it as her opinion that the first wine, cheap 
and modern though it might be, was the better. 
Hats off, then, to a brave woman! How many 
of us would have her courage and her honesty? 

But perhaps you who read this are an expert on 
wine. If so, you are lucky. I am an expert on 
nothing — nothing, anyhow, that matters. I envy 
all you experts tremendously. When I see a cigar- 
expert listening to his cigar before putting it in 
his mouth I wish that I were as great a man as 
he. Privately sometimes I have listened to a 
cigar, but it has told me nothing. The only way 
I can tell whether it is good or bad is by smoking 
it. Even then I could not tell you (without the 
assistance of the band) whether it was a Sancho 



26 If I May 

Panza or a Guoco Piano. I could only tell you 
whether I liked it or not, a question of no im- 
portance whatever. 

Lately I have been trying to become a furni- 
ture-expert, but it is a disheartening business. I 
have a book called Chats on Old Furniture — a 
terrible title to have to ask for in a shop, but I 
asked boldly. Perhaps the word "chat" does not 
make other people feel as unhappy as it makes 
me. But even after reading this book I am not 
really an expert. I know now that it is no good 
listening to a Chippendale chair to see if it is 
really Chippendale ; one must stroke it in order to 
find out whether it is a "genuine antique" or only 
a modern reproduction; but it is obvious that 
years of stroking would be necessary before an 
article of furniture would be properly responsive. 
Is it worth while wasting these years of one's 
life? Indeed, is it worth while (I ask nervously) 
bothering whether a chair or a table is antique or 
modern so long as it is both useful and beautiful? 

Well, let me tell you what happened to us 
yesterday. We found a dresser which appealed 
to us considerably, and we stood in front of it, 
looking at it. We decided that except for a little 
curley-wiggle at the top it was the joUiest dresser 
we had seen. "That's a fine old dresser," said 



Experts 27 

the shopman, coming up at that moment, and he 
smacked it encouragingly. "A really fine old 
dresser, that." We agreed. "Except for those 
curley-wiggles," I added, pointing to them with 

my umbrella. "If we could take those off " 

He looked at me reproachfully. "You wouldn't 
take those off?" he said. "Why, that's what tells 
you that it's a Welsh dresser of 1720." We 
didn't buy that dresser. We decided that the size 
or the price was all wrong. But I wonder now, 
supposing we had bought it, whether we should 
have had the pluck to remove the curley-wiggles 
(and let people mistake it for an English dresser 
of 1920) in order that, so abbreviated, it might 
have been more beautiful. 

For furniture is not beautiful merely because 
it is old. It is absurd to suppose that everything 
made in 1720 — or 1620 or 1520 — was made 
beautifully, as it would be absurd to say that 
everything made in 1920 was beautiful. No doubt 
there will always be people who will regard the 
passing of time as sufficient justification for any 
article of furniture; I could wish that they were 
equally tolerant among the arts as among the 
crafts, so that in 2120 this very article which I 
write now could be referred to with awe as a 
genuine 1920; but all that the passage of time 



28 If I May 

can really do for your dresser is to give a more 
beautiful surface and tone to the wood. This, 
surely, is a matter which you can judge for your- 
self without being an expert. If your dresser 
looks old you have got from it all that age can 
give you; if it looks beautiful you have got from 
it all that a craftsman of any period can give 
you; why worry, then, as to whether or not it is 
a "genuine antique"? The expert may tell you 
that it is a fake, but the fact that he has suddenly 
said so has not made your dining-room less beau- 
tiful. Or if it is less beautiful, it is only because 
an "expert" is now in it. Hurry him out. 



The Robinson Tradition 

HAVING read lately an appreciation of that 
almost forgotten author Marryat, and 
having seen in the shilling box of a second-hand 
bookseller a few days afterward a copy of Mas- 
terman Ready, I went in and bought the same. 
I had read it as a child, and remembered vaguely 
that it combined desert-island adventure with a 
high moral tone; jam and powder in the usual 
proportions. Reading it again, I found that the 
powder was even more thickly spread than I had 
expected; hardly a page but carried with it a 
valuable lesson for the young; yet this particular 
jam (guava and cocoanut) has such an irresistible 
attraction for me that I swallowed It all without 
a struggle, and was left with a renewed craving 
for more and yet more desert-Island stories. Hav- 
ing, unfortunately, no others at hand, the only 
satisfaction I can give myself Is to write about 
them. 

I would say first that, even If an author Is writ- 
ing for children (as was Marryat), and even 

29 



30 If I May 

if morality can best be implanted in the young 
mind with a watering of fiction, yet a desert-island 
story is the last story which should be used for 
this purpose. For a desert-island is a child's 
escape from real life and its many lessons. Ask 
yourself why you longed for a desert-island when 
you were young, and you will find the answer to 
be that you did what you liked there, ate what 
you liked, and carried through your own adven- 
tures. It is the "Family" which spoils The Swiss 
Family Robinson, just as it is the Seagrave family 
which nearly wrecks Masterman Ready. What 
is the good of imagining yourself (as every boy 
does) "Alone in the Pacific" if you are not going 
to be alone? Well, perhaps we do not wish to 
be quite alone; but certainly to have more than 
two on an island is to overcrowd it, and our 
companion must be of a like age and disposition. 
For this reason parents spoil any island for a 
healthy-minded boy. He may love his father and 
mother as fondly as even they could wish, but he 
does not want to take them bathing in the lagoon 
with him — still less to have them on the shore, 
telling him that there are too many sharks this 
morning and that it is quite time he came out. 
Nor for that matter do parents want to be both- 
ered with children on a South Sea holiday. In 



The Robinson Tradition 31 

Masterman Ready there is a horrid little boy 
called Tommy, aged six, who is always letting 
the musket off accidentally, or getting bitten by 
a turtle, or taking more than his share of the 
cocoanut milk. As a grown-up I wondered why 
his father did not give him to the first savage 
who came by, and so allow himself a chance of 
enjoying his island in peace; but at Tommy's age 
I should have resented just as strongly a father 
who, even on a desert-island, could not bear to 
see his boy making a fool of himself with turtle 
and gunpowder. 

I am not saying that a boy would really be 
happy for long, whether on a desert-island or else- 
where, without his father and mother. Indeed 
it is doubtful if he could survive, happily or un- 
happily. Possibly William Seagrave could have 
managed it. William was only twelve, but he 
talked like this: *'I agree with you. Ready. In- 
deed I have been thinking the same thing for 
many days past. ... I wish the savages would 
come on again, for the sooner they come the 
sooner the affair will be decided." A boy who 
can talk like this at twelve is capable of finding 
the bread-fruit tree for himself. But William 
is an exception. I claim no such independence for 
the ordinary boy; I only say that the ordinary 



32 If I May 

boy, however dependent on his parents, does like 
to pretend that he is capable of doing without 
them, wherefore he gives them no leading part 
in the imaginary adventures which he pursues 
so ardently. If they are there at all, it is only 
that he may come back to them in the last chapter 
and tell them all about it . . . and be suitably 
admired. 

Masterman Ready seems to me, then, to be the 
work of a father, not of an understanding writer 
for boys. Marryat wrote it for his own chil- 
dren, towards whom he had responsibilities; not 
for other people's children, for whom he would 
only be concerned to provide entertainment. But 
even if the book was meant for no wider circle 
than the home, one would still feel that the moral 
teaching was overdone. It should be possible 
to be edifying without losing one's sense of hu- 
mour. When Juno, the black servant, was struck 
by lightning and not quite killed, she "appeared 
to be very sensible of the wonderful preservation 
which she had had. She had always been atten- 
tive whenever the Bible was read, but now she 
did not appear to think that the morning and 
evening services were sufficient to express her 
gratitude." Even a child would feel that Juno 
really need not have been struck by lightning 



The Robinson Tradition 33 

at all ; even a child might wonder how many serv- 
ices, on this scale of gratitude, were adequate for 
the rest of the party whom the lightning had 
completely missed. And it was perhaps a little 
self-centred of Ready to thank God for her re- 
covery on the grounds that she could "ill be 
spared" by a family rather short-handed in the 
rainy season. 

However, the story is the thing. As long as a 
desert-island book contains certain ingredients, 
I do not mind if other superfluous matter creeps 
in. Our demands — we of the elect who adore 
desert-islands — are simple. The castaways must 
build themselves a hut with the aid of a bag of 
nails saved from the wreck; they must catch 
turtles by turning them over on their backs; they 
must find the bread-fruit tree and have adven- 
tures with sharks. Twice they must be visited 
by savages. On the first occasion they are taken 
by surprise, but — the savages being equally sur- 
prised — no great harm is done. Then the Hero 
says, "They will return when the wind is favour- 
able," and he arranges his defences, not forgetting 
to lay in a large stock of water. The savages 
return in force, and then — this is most important 
— at the most thirsty moment of the siege it is 
discovered that the water is all gone ! (Generally 



34 If I May 

a stray arrow has pierced the water-butt, but 
in Masterman Ready the insufferable Tommy has 
played the fool with it. (He would.) This is 
the Hero's great opportunity. He ventures to the 
spring to get more water, and returns with it — 
wounded. Barely have the castaways wetted their 
lips with the precious fluid when the attack breaks 
out with redoubled fury. It seems now that all 
is lost . . . when, lo! a shell bursts into the 
middle of the attacking hordes. (Never into the 
middle of the defenders. That would be silly.) 
"Look," the Hero cries, "a vessel off-shore with 
its main braces set and a jib-sail flying" — or what- 
ever it may be. And they return to London. 

This Is the story which we want, and we can- 
not have too many of them. Should you ever 
see any of us with our noses over the shilling 
box and an eager light in our eyes, you may be 
sure that we are on the track of another one. 



Getting Things Done 

IN the castle of which I am honorary baron we 
are in the middle of an orgy of "getting things 
done." It must always be so, I suppose, when 
one moves into a new house. After the last fur- 
niture van has departed, and the painters' bill 
has been receipted, one feels that one can now 
settle down to enjoy one's new surroundings. 
But no. The discoveries begin. This door wants 
a new lock on it, that fireplace wants a brick taken 
out, the garden is in need of something else, 
somebody ought to inspect the cistern. What 
about the drains? There are a hundred things 
to be "done." 

I have a method in these matters. When I ob- 
serve that something wants doing, I say casually 
to the baroness, "We ought to do something 
about that fireplace," or whatever it is. I say 
it with the air of a man who knows exactly what 
to do, and would do it himself if he were not 
so infernally busy. The correct answer to this 
is, "Yes, I'll go and see about it to-day." Some- 

35 



36 If I May 

times the baroness tries to put it on to me by 
saying, "We ought to do something about the 
cistern," but she has not quite got the casual tone 
necessary, and I have no difficulty in replying 
(with the air of a man who, etc.), "Yes, we 
ought." The proper answer to this is, "Very 
well, then. I'll go and see about it." In either 
case, as you will agree, action on the part of the 
baroness should follow. 

Unfortunately it doesn't. She, it appears, is 
a partner in my weakness. We neither of us 
know how to get things done. It is a knowledge 
which one can never acquire. Either you are 
born with an instinct for the man round the cor- 
ner who tests cisterns, or you are born without 
it. In which case you never, never find him. There 
are men with the instinct so highly developed 
that they can tell you at a moment's notice the 
name and address, not merely of a man who will 
test your cistern for you, but of the one man in 
your neighbourhood who will test it most effi- 
ciently and most cheaply. If your canary moulted 
unduly, and you said to your wife, "We must do 
something about Ambrose," they could tell you 
at once of the best canary-mender to approach. 
These are the men I admire. But there are weak- 
lings (of both sexes, unfortunately) who would 



Getting Things Done 37 

not even know whether a greengrocer or a vet- 
erinary surgeon was the man to send for, and 
who are entirely vague as to whether a cistern is 
tested for water or for lead-poisoning. 

The press speaks of this or that politician some- 
times as the "Minister who gets things done." 
I have always felt that, given an adequate per- 
manent staff, I might go down to fame as the 
householder who got things done. As you see, 
my staff lets me down. I am quite capable of 
sitting in my office and saying to an under-secre- 
tary, "We must do something about this shell 
business." This, in fact, is just my line. I am 
quite capable of saying firmly, "I must have ten 
million big guns by August." And if the under- 
secretary only made the correct reply, "Very well, 
sir, I'll see about it," my photograph would ap- 
pear in the papers as that of "the man who got 
the guns." But when your under-secretary re- 
fuses to carry on, where are you? 

What I want, and what, I imagine, most peo- 
ple who have moved into a new house want, is an 
intermediary to get things done for us. I sug- 
gest this as a profession to any demobilized sol- 
dier looking for work. He should walk about 
London, making a note of the houses which have 
just been sold or let, and as soon as the new resi- 



38 If I May 

dents have taken possession, he should send 
round his card. "Tell me what is worrying you," 
he would say, "and I will see that something is 
done about it." He might charge a couple of 
guineas as his fee. Perhaps It would be better 
if he said, "Let me tell you what Is likely to 
worry you" — if, that is to say, his business was 
to go round your house directly you got Into It, 
to make a list of the jobs that wanted doing, and 
then, armed with your authority, to go off and 
get them done. Many people would gladly pay 
him two guineas for such excellent services, and 
he could probably pick up a trifle more as com- 
mission from the men to whom he gave the work. 
It would be worth trying anyway. 

But, of course, such a man would have to have 
a vast knowledge of affairs. He would have 
to know, for Instance, how one buys string. In 
the ordinary way one doesn't buy string; It comes 
to you, and you take It off and send it back again. 
But the occasion may arise when you want lots 
and lots of it. Then It Is necessary to look for 
a string shop. A friend of mine spent the whole 
of one afternoon trying to buy a ball of string. 
He wandered from one ironmonger to the other 
(he had a fixed Idea that an ironmonger was the 
man), and finally, In despair, went Into a large 



Getting Things Done 39 

furnishing shop, noted for its "artistic suites." 
He was very humble by this time, and his petition 
that they should sell him some string because he 
was an old customer of theirs was unfortunately 
worded. As far as I know he is still stringless, 
just as I am still waiting for somebody to do some- 
thing about the cistern. 



Christmas Games 

THE shops are putting on their Christmas 
dress. The cotton-wool, that time-hal- 
lowed substitute for snow, is creeping int^ the 
plate-glass windows; the pink lace collars are 
encircling again the cakes; and the "charming 
wedding or birthday present" of a week ago re- 
news its youth as a "suitable Yuletide gift." 
Everything calls to us to get our Christmas shop- 
ping done early this year, but, as usual, we shall 
put it off until the latest possible day, and In that 
last mad rush we shall get Aunt Emily the wrong 
pair of mittens and overlook poor Uncle John 
altogether. 

Before I begin my own shopping I am waiting 
for an announcement In the papers. All that my 
paper has told me Is that the Christmas toy 
bazaars of the big stores are now open. I have 
not yet seen that list and description of the new 
games of the season for which I wait so eagerly. 
It is possible that this year will produce the mas- 
terpiece — the game which possesses in the high- 

40 



Christmas Games 41 

est degree all the qualities of the ideal Christmas 
game. The unfortunate thing is that, even if 
such a game were to appear in this year's cata- 
logue, we should have lost it by next year; for 
the National Sporting Club (or whoever ar- 
ranges these things) has always been convinced 
that "novelty" is the one quality required at 
Christmas, the hall-mark of excellence which no 
Christmas shopper can resist. If a game is novel, 
it is enough. To the manager of a toy depart- 
ment the continued vogue of cricket must be very 
bewildering. 

Let us consider the ideal Christmas game. In 
the first place, it must be a round game; that is 
to say, at least six people must be able to play it 
simultaneously. No game for two only is per- 
missible at Christmas — unless, of course, it be 
under the mistletoe. Secondly, it must be a game 
into which skill does not enter, or, if it does, it 
must be a skill which is as likely to be shown by 
a child of eight or an old gentleman of eighty 
as by a 'Y^arsity blue. Such skill, for instance, 
as manifests itself at Tiddleywinks, that noble 
game. Yet, even so, Tiddleywinks is too skilful 
a pursuit. One cannot say what it is that makes 
a good Tiddleywinker, whether eye or wrist or 
supple finger-work, but it is obvious that one who 



42 If I May 

is "winking" badly must be depressed by the 
thought that he is appearing stupid and clumsy 
to his neighbours, and that this feeling is not 
conducive to that happiness which his many 
Christmas cards have called down upon him. 

It is better, therefore, that the element of skill 
should be absent. Let it be a game of luck only ; 
and, since it is impossible to play a Christmas 
game for money, you will not be depressed if 
you lose. 

The third and last essential of the ideal game is 
that it must provoke laughter. You cannot laugh 
at Tiddleywinks, nor at Ludo (as I hear, but I 
have never yet discovered what Ludo is), nor 
at Happy Families. But the ideal game is provo- 
cative of that best kind of laughter — laughter at 
the undeserved misfortunes of others, seasoned 
by the knowledge that at any moment a similar 
misfortune may happen to oneself. 

Just before the war I came across the ideal 
game. I forget what it was called, unless it was 
some such name as "The Prince's Quest." Six 
princes, suitably coloured, set out to win the hand 
of the beautiful princess. They started at one 
end of a long and winding road, and she waited 
for the first arrival at the other end. The road, 
which passed through the most enthralling seen- 



Christmas Games 43 

ery, was numbered by milestones — **i" to "200". 
Suppose you were the Red Prince, you shook, a 
die (I mean the half of two dice), and if a four 
turned up, you advanced to the fourth milestone. 
And so on, in succession. So far It doesn't sound 
very exciting. But you are forgetting the scenery. 
Perhaps at the twelfth milestone there awaited 
you the shoes of swiftness, which carried you in 
one bound to the twentieth milestone; thus by 
throwing a three at the ninth, you advanced eleven 
miles, whereas if you had thrown a four you 
would only have advanced four miles. On ar- 
riving at other lucky milestones you received a 
cloak of darkness, which took you past various 
obstacles which were holding the others up, or 
perhaps were introduced to a potent dwarf, who 
showed you a short cut forbidden to your rivals. 
One way and another you pushed ahead of the 
other princes. 

And then the inevitable happened. You ar- 
rived at the eighty-fourth milestone (or whatever 
it was) and you found a wicked enchanter waiting 
for you, who cast upon you a backward spell, as 
a result of which you had to travel backwards for 
the next three turns. Undaunted by this reverse, 
you returned bravely to it, and perhaps came 
upon the eighty-fourth milestone again. But 



44 If I May 

even so you did not despair, for there was always 
hope. The Blue Prince, who is now leading, ap- 
proaches the ninety-sixth milestone. He is, in- 
deed, at the ninety-fifth. A breathless moment as 
he shakes the die. Will he? He does. He 
throws a one, reaches the ninety-sixth milestone, 
topples headlong into the underground river, and 
is swept back to the starting-point again. 

A great game. But our edition of it went to 
some hospital during the war, and I fear now 
that I shall never play it again. Yet I scan the 
papers eagerly, hoping for some announcement 
of it. Not this actual game, of course, but some 
version of it; some "Christmas novelty," in 
which, perhaps, the princes are called knights, 
but the laughter remains the same. 



The Mathematical Mind 



Y daily paper just now Is full of mathe- 
matical difficulties, submitted by its read- 
ers for the amusement of one of its staff. Every 
morning he appeals to us for assistance in solving 
tricky little problems about pints of water and 
herrings and rectangular fields. The magic num- 
ber "9" has a great fascination for him. It is 
terrifying to think, that if you multiply any row 
of figures by 9 the sum of the figures thus ob- 
tained is divisible by 9. It is uncanny to hear that 
if a clock takes six seconds to strike six It takes 
as much as thirteen seconds and a fifth to strike 
twelve. 

As a relief from searching for news In a press 
devoid of news, the study of these problems Is 
welcome enough, and to the unmathematlcal mind, 
no doubt, the solutions appear to be something 
miraculous. But to the mathematical mind a 
thing more miraculous Is the awe with which the 
unmathematlcal regard the simplest manipulation 
of figures. Most of my life at school was spent 

45 



46 If I May 

in such pursuits that I feel bound to claim the 
mathematical mind to some extent, with the re- 
sult that I can look down wonderingly upon these 
deeps of ignorance yawning daily in the papers 
— much, I dare say, as the senior wrangler looks 
down upon me. Figures may puzzle me occa- 
sionally, but at least they never cause me sur- 
prise or alarm. 

Naturally, then, I am jealous for the mathe- 
matical mind. If a man who makes a false quan- 
tity, or attributes Lycidas to Keats, is generally 
admitted to be uncultured, I resent It very much 
that no stigma attaches to the gentleman who can- 
not do short division. I remember once at school 
having to do a piece of Latin prose about the 
Black Hole of Calcutta. It was a moving story 
as told in our prose book, and I had spent an 
interesting hour turning into fairly correct and 
wholly uninspired Latin — the sort of Latin I 
suppose which a small uneducated Roman child 
(who had heard the news) would have written to 
a school-boy friend. The size of the Black Hole 
was given as "twenty foot square." I had no 
idea how to render this idiomatically, but I knew 
that a room 20 ft. square contained 400 square 
feet. Also I knew the Latin for one square foot. 



The Mathematical Mind 47 

But you will not be surprised to hear that my form 
master, a man of culture and education, leapt 
upon me. 

"Quadringenti," he snapped, "is 400, not 20." 

"Quite so," I agreed. "The room had 400 
square feet." 

"Read it again. It says 20 square feet." 

"No, no, 20 feet square." 

He glared at me in indignation. "What's the 
difference?" he said. 

I sighed and began to explain. I went on ex- 
plaining. If there had not been other things to 
do than teaching cultured and educated school- 
masters, I might be explaining still. 

Yes, I resented this; and I resent now the mat- 
ter-of-fact way in which we accept the ignorance 
of mathematics shown by our present teachers 
— the press. At every election in which there are 
only two candidates a dozen papers discover with 
.amazement this astounding coincidence in the fig- 
lures: that the decrease in, say, the Liberal vote 
subtracted from the increase in the Conservative 
vote is exactly equal to the increase in the poll. 
If there should happen to be three candidates 
jifor a seat, the coincidences discovered are yet 
more numerous and astonishing. Last Christ- 



48 If I May 

mas a paper let itself go still further, and dived 
into the economics of the plum pudding. A plum 
pudding contains raisins, flour, and sugar. Rai- 
sins had gone up 2d. a pound, or whatever it was, 
flour 6d., and sugar id. Hence the pudding now 
would cost gd. a pound more ! 

Consider, too, the extraordinary antics of the 
press over the methods of scoring in the cricket 
championship. Wonderful new suggestions are 
made which, if followed, could only have the effect 
of bringing the teams out in exactly the same 
order as before. The simplest of simple prob- 
lems in algebra would have shown them this, but 
they feared to mix themselves up with such un- 
known powers of darkness. The Theory of 
Probability, again, leaves the press entirely cold, 
so that it is ready to father any childish "sys- 
tem" for Monte Carlo. And nine men out of 
ten really believe that, if you toss a penny five 
times in the air and it comes down heads each 
time, it is more likely to come down tails than 
heads next time. 

Yet papers and people who think like this are 
considered quite capable of dealing with the 
extraordinarily complicated figures of national 
finance. They may boom or condemn insurance 
bills and fiscal policies, and we listen to them 



The Mathematical Mind 49 

reverently. As long as they know what Mr. Glad- 
stone said In '74, It doesn't seem to matter at 
all what Mr. Todhunter said in his "Arithmetic 
for Beginners." 



Going Out to Dinner 

IF you are one of those lucky people whose mo- 
tor is not numbered (as mine is) 19 or ii or 
22, it does not really matter where your host for 
the evening prefers to live; Bayswater or Batter- 
sea or Blackheath — it is all the same to your 
chauffeur. But for those of us who have to fight 
for bus or train or taxicab, it is different. We 
have to say to ourselves, "Is it worth it?" A 
man who lives in Chelsea (for instance) demands 
more from an invitation to Hampstead than from 
an invitation to Kensington. If such a man were 
interested in people rather than in food, he 
might feel that one actor-manager and a rural 
dean among his fellow-guests would be sufficient 
attraction in a Kensington house, but that at least 
two archbishops and a revue-producer would have 
to be forthcoming at Hampstead before the jour- 
ney on a wet night would be justified. On the other 
hand, if he were a vulgar man who preferred 
food to people, he would divide London up into 
whisky, burgundy, and champagne areas accord- 

50 



Going Out to Dinner 51 

ing to their accessibility from his own house; and 
on receiving an invitation to a house in the outer 
or champagne area (as it might be at Dulwich), 
he would try to discover, either by inquiry among 
his friends or by employing a private detective, 
whether this house fulfilled the necessary condi- 
tion. If not, of course, then he would write a 
polite note to say that he would be in the country, 
or confined to his bed with gout, on the day in 
question. 

I am as fond of going out to dinner as anyone 
else is, but there is a moment, just before I begin 
to array myself for it, when I wish that it were 
on some other evening. If the telephone bell 
rings, I say, "Thank Heavens, Mrs. Parkinson- 
Jones has died suddenly. I mean, how sad," and, 
looking as solemn as I can, I pick up the receiver. 

"Is that the Excelsior Laundry?" says a voice. 
"You only sent back half a pair of socks this 
week." 

I replace the receiver and go reluctantly up- 
stairs to dress. There is no help for it. As I 
dress, I wonder who my partner at the table will 
be, and if at this moment she is feeling as gloomy 
about the prospects as I am. How much better 
if we had both dined comfortably at home. 

I remember some years ago taking in a Dowa- 



52 If I May 

ger Countess. Don't think that I am priding 
myself on this; I realize as well as you do that 
a mistake of some sort was made. Probably my 
hostess took me for somebody else — Sir Thomas 
Lipton, it may have been. Anyway the Dowager 
Countess and I led the way downstairs to the din- 
ing-room, and all the other guests murmured to 
themselves, "Who on earth is that?" and told 
each other that no doubt I was one of the Serbian 
Princes who had recently arrived in the country. 
I forgot what the Countess and I talked about; 
probably yachts, or tea; but I was not paying 
much attention to our conversation. I had other 
things to think about. 

For the Dowager Countess (wisely, I think) 
was dieting herself. She went through the eve- 
ning on a glass of water and two biscuits. Each 
new dish on its way round the table was brought 
first to her; she waved it away, and it came to me. 
There was nothing to be done. I had to open 
it. 

My partciular memory is of a quail-pie. Quails 
may be all right for Moses in the desert, but, if 
they are served In the form of pie at dinner, they 
should be distributed at a side-table, not handed 
round from guest to guest. The Countess having 



Going Out to Dinner 53 

shuddered at it and resumed her biscuit, it was 
left to me to make the opening excavation. The 
difficulty was to know where each quail began 
and ended; the job really wanted a professional 
quail-finder, who might have indicated the point 
on the surface of the crust at which it would be 
most hopeful to dig for quails. 

As it was, I had to dig at random, and, being 
unlucky, I plunged the knife straight into the 
middle of a bird. It was impossible, of course, 
to withdraw the quail through the slit I had thus 
made in the pastry, nor could I get my knife out 
(with a bird sticking on the end of it) in order to 
make a second slit at a suitable angle. I tried 
to shake the quail off inside the pie, but it was 
fixed too firmly. I tried pulling it off against the 
inside of the crust, but it became obvious that if 
I persisted in this, the whole roof would come off. 
The footman, with great presence of mind, real- 
ized my difficulty and offered me a second knife. 
Unfortunately, I misjudged the width of quails, 
and plunging this second knife into the pie a little 
farther on, I landed into the middle of an- 
other quail no less retentive of cutlery than the 
first. The dish now began to look more like a 
game than a pie, and, waving away a third knife, 



54 If I May 

I said (quite truly by this time) that I didn't like 
quails, and that on second thoughts I would ask 
the Dowager Countess to lend me a biscuit. 

Fortunately, dinner is not all quail-pie. But 
even In the case of some more amenable dish, 
the first-comer is in a position of great responsi- 
bility. Casting a hasty eye round the company, 
he has to count the number of diners, estimate 
the size of the dish, divide the one by the other, 
and take a helping of the appropriate size, know- 
ing that the fashion which he inaugurates will be 
faithfully followed. How much less exacting is 
the position of the more lowly-placed man; my 
own, for instance, on ordinary occasions. There 
may be two quails and an egg-cup left when the 
footman reaches me, or even only the egg-cup, 
but at least I have nobody but myself to consider. 

But let us get away from food for the body, 
and consider food for the mind. I refer to that 
intellectual conversation which it is the business 
of the guests at a dinner-party to contribute. Not 
"What shall we eat?" but ''What shall be talk 
about?" is the question which is really disturb- 
ing us as we tug definitely at our necktie and give 
a last look at ourselves in the glass before follow- 
ing the servant upstairs. 



Going Out to Dinner 55 

"Will you take in Miss Montmorency?" says 
our hostess. 

We bow to Miss Montmorency hopefully. 

"Er — ^jolly day it's been, hasn't it?" 

No, really, we can't say anything about the 
weather. We must be original. 

"Er — have you been to any theatres lately?" 

No, no, everybody says that. Well, then, what 
can we say? Let us try again. 

"How do you do. Er — I see by the paper this 
evening that the Bolsheviks have captured 
Omsk." 

"Captured Whatsk?" 

"Omsk." Or was it Tomsk? Fortunately it 
does not matter, for Miss Montmorency is not 
the least interested. 

"Oh!" she says. 

I hate people who say "Oh!" It means that 
you have to begin all over again. 

"I've been playing golfsk — I mean golf — this 
afternoon," we try. "Do you play at all?" 

"No." 

Then it is no good telling her what our handi- 
cap is. 

"No doubt your prefer tennis," we hazard. 

"Oh, no." 



56 If I May 

"I mean bridge." 

"I don't play any game," she answers. 

Then the sooner she goes away and talks to 
somebody else the better. 

"Ah, I expect you're more interested in the 
theatre?" 

"I hardly ever go to the theatre." 

"Well, of course, a good book by the fire- 
side—" 

"I never read," she says. 

Dash the woman, what does she do? But be- 
fore we can ask her, she lets us into the great 
secret. 

"I like talking," she says. 

Good Heavens ! What else have we been try- 
ing to do all this time? 

However, it is only the very young girl at her 
first dinner-party whom it is difficult to entertain. 
At her second dinner-party, and thereafter, she 
knows the whole art of being amusing. All she 
has to do is to listen; all we men have to do is to 
tell her about ourselves. Indeed, sometimes I 
think that it is just as well to begin at once. Let 
us be quite frank about it, and get to work as 
soon as we are introduced. 

"How do you do. Lovely day it has been, 
hasn't it? It was on just such a day as this, thirty- 



Going Out to Dinner 57 

five years ago, that I was born in the secluded vil- 
lage of Puddlecome of humble but honest par- 
ents. Nestling among the western hills ..." 

And so on. Ending, at the dessert, with the 
thousand we earned that morning. 



The Etiquette of Escape 

THERE is a girl in one of William de 
Morgan's books who interrupts the nar- 
rator of a breathless tiger-hunting story with the 
rather disconcerting warning, "I'm on the side 
of the tiger; I always am." It was the sporting 
instinct. Tigers may be wicked beasts who de- 
fend themselves when they are attacked, but one 
cannot help feeling a little sorry for them. Their 
number is up. The hunters are too many, the 
rifles too accurate, for the hunted to have any 
real chance. So she was on the side of the tiger; 
she always was. 

In the same way I am on the side of the con- 
vict; I always am. Not, of course, until he is a 
convict. But when once the Law has condemned 
him, and he is safely in prison, then he is only 
one against so many. It is impossible not to sym- 
pathize with his attempts to escape. Perhaps, 
if one lived close to a prison, in a cottage, say, 
whose tenant was invariably called upon by any 
escaping prisoner and made to exchange clothes 

58 



The Etiquette of Escape 59 

with the help of a crow-bar, one might feel dif- 
ferently. But in theory we are all of us inclined 
to applaud the man who fights successfully such 
a lone battle against such tremendous odds; yes, 
even if it was the blackest of crimes which sent 
him into captivity. 

It is, therefore, extraordinarily jolly to read 
about the escape of political prisoners from gaol. 
One has to stifle no protests from one's con- 
science while applauding them, for it is absurd 
to suppose that the world is any the worse place 
for their being loose again. Probably they are 
much more dangerous in prison than out of it. 
But besides applauding them, one envies them 
heartily. What fun they must have had when 
arranging it! What fun, too, to attempt an es- 
cape, when the worst that can happen to you, if 
you are recaptured, is that the next escape be- 
comes a little more difficult. No bread and water, 
no punishment cell for a political prisoner. 

All the same, these are not quite the ideal es- 
capes. I am a trifle exigent in such matters. I 
allow my prisoners a little latitude, but there 
are certain rules which must be observed. Sinn 
Feiners, for instance, make it much too easy for 
themselves. Their friends from outside are per- 
mitted to visit them, and to discuss openly (but of 



6o If I May 

course, in Irish) all the arrangements for the 
great day. When the day comes, they make off 
by motor-car, and as likely as not have a steam- 
yacht waiting for them on the coast. It was not 
thus that I used to escape in the early nineties. I 
observed the rules. 

The first rule was that the only means of com- 
munication with outside was the roll of bread 
which formed one's principal meal. Biting eagerly 
into the bread, the hungry prisoner found himself 
entangled in a message from his loved one. Of 
course, in these last few years he would just have 
thought that it was part of the bread, perhaps 
a trifle more indigestible than usual, but in those 
days he would have no excuse for not realizing 
that his Araminta was getting into touch with 
him. This first message did not say much; just 
"All my love, and I am sending a file to-morrow," 
so as to prevent him from breaking his jaw on 
it. On the next day, he would open the roll cau- 
tiously, and behold! a small file would be em- 
bedded within. 

It is wonderful what can be done with quite a 
small file. But we must remember that the world 
moved more slowly in those days. One had 
leisure in which to do a job of work properly. 
Perhaps our prisoner took a couple of years filing 



The Etiquette of Escape 6i 

the gyves off his wrists (holding the file carefully 
in the teeth), and another year to remove the 
manacles from his ankles. Fortunately he was 
left alone to pursue these avocations. The goaler 
pushed in the daily portion of bread and water, 
but made no inquiry about his prisoner's well- 
being. Only the essential tame rat kept him com- 
pany, and Araminta outside, to whom he dropped 
an occasional note to say that he had done an- 
other millimetre that morning. Perhaps she did 
not get it; it was borne swiftly away by the river 
which flowed beneath the walls, and never came 
to the opposite bank, whereon she waited for 
him. But she did not lose hope. These things al- 
ways took a long time. 

And then, when the fetters had been removed, 
and two of the bars in the narrow window had 
been sawn through, there came the great moment. 
The prisoner was now free to tear his sheet and 
his blanket and his underclothes into strips, and 
plait himself a rope. One had to time this for 
the summer, of course. One couldn't go cutting 
up one's shirt in the middle of winter. So, upon 
a dark night in August, the prisoner tied his rope 
to the remaining bar, squeezed through the win- 
dow, and let himself down into space. Was the 
rope long enough? It wasn't, of course; it never 



62 If I May 

was. But, once at the end of It, the prisoner 
would realize, his senses quickened by the emer- 
gency, that It was too late to go back. From the 
extreme end he breathed a prayer and dropped. 
. . . Splash! And five minutes later he was 
embracing Aramlnta. There was no pursuit; 
they were sportsmen In those days, and It was. 
recognized that he had won. 

That is the classic mode of escape. But there 
are variants of It which I am prepared to allow. 
The goaler may have a daughter, who, moved by 
the romantic history and pallor of the prisoner, 
may exchange clothes with him. The prisoner 
may pass himself off for dead, may be actually 
burled, and then rescued from the grave just in 
time by the pre-warned and ever-ready Aramlnta. 
There are many legitimate ways of escape, but 
the essential thing is that all messages to the 
prisoner from his Aramlnta outside should be con- 
veyed in his loaf of bread. To whisper them In 
Irish is too easy, too unromantlc. 

But In any case I am on the side of the prisoner. 
I always am. 



Geographical Research 

THE other day I met a man who didn't know- 
where Tripoli was. Tripoli happened to 
come into the conversation, and he was evidently 
at a loss. "Let's see," he said. "Tripoli Is just 
down by the — er — ^you know. What's the name 
of that place?" "That's right," I answered, 
"just opposite Thingumabob. I could show you 
in a minute on the map. It's near — ^what do they 
call It?" At this moment the train stopped, and 
I got out and went straight home to look at my 
atlas. 

Of course I really knew exactly where Tripoli 
was. About thirty years ago, when I learnt 
geography, one of the questions they were always 
asking me was, "What are the exports of Spain, 
and where Is Tripoli?" But much may happen 
in twenty years; coast erosion and tidal waves and 
things like that. I looked at the map In order to 
assure myself that Tripoli had remained pretty 
firm. As far as I could make It out It had moved. 
Certainly It must have looked different thirty 

63 



64 If I May 

years ago, for I took some little time to locate 
it. But no doubt one's point of view changes with 
the decades. To a boy Tripoli might seem a long 
way from Italy — even in Asia Minor; but when 
he grew up his standards of measurement would 
be altered. Tripoli would appear in its proper 
place due south of Sicily. 

I always enjoy these periodic excursions to my 
atlas. People talk a good deal of nonsense about 
the importance of teaching geography at school 
instead of useless subjects like Latin and Greek, 
but so long as you have an atlas near you, of what 
use is geography? Why waste time learning 
where Tripoli and Fiume are, when you can turn 
to a map of Africa and spot them in a moment? 
In a leading article in The Times (no less — our 
premier English newspaper) it was stated during 
a general election that Darlington was in York- 
shire. You may say that The Times leader 
writers ought to have been taught geography; I 
say that unfortunately they have been taught 
geography. They learnt, or thought they learnt, 
that Darlington was a Yorkshire town. If they 
had been left in a state of decent ignorance, they 
would have looked for Darlington in the map and 
found that it was in Durham. (One moment — 
Map 29 — ^Yes, Durham; that's right.) As it is, 



Geographical Research 65 

there are at this moment some hundreds of re- 
tired colonels who go about believing implicitly 
that Darlington is in Yorkshire because The 
Times has said it. How much more important 
than a knowledge of geography is the possession 
of an atlas. 

My own atlas is a particularly fine specimen. 
It contains all sorts of surprising maps which 
never come into ordinary geography. I think my 
favourite is a picture of the Pacific Ocean, 
coloured in varying shades of blue according to 
the depths of the sea. The deep ultramarine ter- 
rifies me. I tremble for a ship which Is passing 
over it, and only breathe again when it reaches 
the very palest blue. There Is one little patch — 
the Nero Deep in the Ladrone Basin — which is 
actually 31,614 feet deep. I suppose if you sailed 
over it you would find it no bluer than the rest 
of the sea, and If you fell into it you would feel 
no more alarmed than if it were 31,613 feet deep ; 
but still you cannot see it in the atlas without a 
moment's awe. 

Then my atlas has a map of "The British Em- 
pire showing the great commercial highways"; 
another of "The North Polar regions showing 
the progress of explorations" ; maps of the trade 
routes, of gulf streams, and beautiful things of 



66 If I May 

that kind. It tells you how far it is from South- 
ampton to Fremantle, so that if you are inter- 
ested in the M.C.C. Australian team you can fol- 
low them day by day across the sea. Why, with 
all your geographical knowledge you couldn't 
even tell me the distance between Yokohama and 
Honolulu, but I can give the answer in a moment 
— 3,379 miles. Also I know exactly what a sec- 
tion of the world along lat. 45 deg. N. looks like 
— and there are very few of our most learned 
men who can say as much. 

But my atlas goes even farther than this, 
though I for one do not follow it. It gives dia- 
grams of exports and imports; it tells you where 
things are manufactured or where grown; it gives 
pictures of sheep — an immense sheep representing 
New Zealand and a mere insect representing Rus- 
sia, and alas ! no sheep at all for Canada and 
Germany and China. Then there are large cigars 
for America and small mild cigars for France 
and Germany; pictures in colour of such un- 
familiar objects as spindles and raw silk and 
miners and Mongolians and iron ore; statistics 
of traffic receipts and diamonds. I say that I 
don't follow my atlas here, because Information 
of this sort does not seem to belong properly to 
an atlas. This is not my idea of geography at 



Geographical Research 67 

all. When I open my atlas I open it to look at 
maps — to find out where Tripoli is — not to ac- 
quire information about flax and things; yet I 
cannot forego the boast that if I wanted I could 
even speak at length about flax. 

And lastly there is the index. Running my eye 
down it, I can tell you in less than a minute where 
such different places as Jorobado, Kabba, Hideg- 
kut, Paloo, and Pago Pago are to be found. 
Could you, even after your first-class honours in 
the Geography Tripos, be as certain as I am? 
Of Hidegkut, perhaps, or Jorobado, but not of 
Pago Pago. 

On the other hand, you might possibly have 
known where Tripoli was. 



Children's Plays 

AT the beginning of every pantomime season, 
we are brought up against two original dis- 
coveries. The first is that Mr. Arthur Collins 
has undoubtedly surpassed himself; the other, 
that "the children's pantomime" is not really a 
pantomime for children at all. Mr. Collins, in 
fact, has again surpassed himself In providing an 
entertainment for men and women of the world. 
One has to ask oneself, then, what sort of 
pantomime children really like. I ought to know, 
because I once tried to write one, and some kind 
critic was found to say (as generally happens on 
these occasions) that I showed "a wonderful in- 
sight into the child's mind." Perhaps he was 
thinking of the elephant. The manager had a 
property elephant left over from some other play 
which he had produced lately. There it was, ly- 
ing in the wings and getting in everybody's way. 
I think he had left it about in the hope that I 
might be inspired by it. At one of the final re- 
hearsals, after I had fallen over this elephant 

68 



Children's Plays 69 

several times, he said, "It's a pity we aren't going 
to use the elephant. Couldn't you get it in some- 
where?" I said that I thought I could. After 
all, getting an elephant Into a play is merely a 
question of stagecraft. If you cannot get an ele- 
phant on and off the stage in a natural way, your 
technique Is simply hopeless, and you had better 
give up writing plays altogether. I need hardly 
say that my technique was quite up to the work. 
At the critical moment the boy-hero said, "Look, 
there's an elephant," pointing to that particular 
part of the stage by which alone it could enter, 
and there, sure enough, the elephant was. It then 
went through its trick of conveying a bun to its 
mouth, after which the boy said, "Good-bye, 
elephant," and it was hauled off backwards. Of 
course It Intruded a certain gross materialism into 
the delicate fancy of my play, but I did not care 
to say so, because one has to keep In with the 
manager. Besides, there was the elephant, eat- 
ing Its head off; It might just as well be used. 

Well, so far as the children were concernedj, 
the elephant was the success of the play. Up to 
the moment of its entrance they were — well, I 
hope not bored, but no more than politely Inter- 
ested. But as soon as the hero said, "Look, 
there's an elephant," you could feel them all 



70 If I May 

jumping up and down in their seats and saying 
"Oo 1" Nor was this "Oo" atmosphere ever quite 
dispelled thereafter. The elephant had with- 
drawn, but there was always the hope now that 
he might come on again, and if an elephant, why 
not a giraffe, a hippopotamus, or a polar-bear? 
For the rest of the pantomime every word was 
followed with breathless interest. At any mo- 
ment the hero might come out with another bril- 
liant line — "Look, there's a hippopotamus." 
Even when it was proved, with the falling of the 
final curtain, that the author had never again 
risen to these heights, there was still one chance 
left. Perhaps if they clapped loudly enough, the 
elephant would hear, and would take a call like 
the others. 

What sort of pantomime do children like? It 
is a strange thing that we never ask ourselves 
"What sort of plays — or books or pictures — do 
public-school men like?" You say that that would 
be an absurd question. Yet it is not nearly so 
absurd as the other. For the real differences of 
thought and feeling between you and your neigh- 
bour were there when you were children, and your 
agreements are the result of the subsequent com- 
munity of interests which you have shared — in 
similar public-schools, universities, services, or 



Children's Plays 71 

professions. Why should two children want to 
see the same pantomime? Apart from the fact 
that "two children" may mean such different 
samples of humanity as a boy of five and a girl of 
fifteen, is there any reason why Smith's child and 
Robinson's child should think alike? And as for 
your child, my dear sir (or madam), I have only 
to look at it — and at you — to see at once how 
utterly different it is from every other child which, 
has ever been born. Obviously it would want 
something very much superior to the sort of pan- 
tomime which would amuse those very ordinary 
children of which Smith and Robinson are so 
proud. 

I cannot, therefore, advance my own childish 
recollections of my first pantomime as trustworthy 
evidence of what other children like. But I should 
wish you to know that when I was taken to Beauty 
and the Beast at the age of seven, it was no ele- 
phant, nor any other kind of beast, which made 
the afternoon sacred for me. It was Beauty. I 
just gazed and gazed at Beauty. Never had I 
seen anything so lovely. For weeks afterwards 
I dreamed about her. Nothing that was said or 
done on the stage mattered so long as she was 
there. Probably the author had put some of his 
most delightful work into that pantomime — "dia- 



72 If I May 

logue which showed a wonderful insight into the 
child's mind"; I apologize to him for not having 
listened to it. (I can sympathize with him now.) 
Or it may be that the author had written for men 
and women of the world; his dialogue was full 
of that sordid cynicism about married life which 
is still considered amusing, so that the aunt who 
took me wondered if this were really a pantomime 
suitable for children. Poor dear ! — as if I heard 
a word of it, I who was just waiting for Beauty 
to come back. 

What do children like? I do not think that 
there is any answer to that question. They like 
anything; they like everything; they like so many 
different things. But I am certain that there has 
never been an ideal play for very young children. 
It will never be written, for the reason that no 
self-respecting writer could bore himself so com- 
pletely as to write it. (Also it is doubtful if fath- 
ers and mothers, uncles and aunts, would sacrifice 
themselves a second time, after they had once 
sat through it.) For very young children do not 
want humour or whimsicality or delicate fancy or 
any of the delightful properties which we at- 
tribute to the ideal children's play. I do not say 
that they will rise from their stalls and call loudly 
for their perambulators, if these qualities creep 



Children's Plays 73 

into the play, but they can get on very happily 
without them. All that they want is a continu- 
ous procession of ordinary everyday events — the 
arrival of elephants (such as they see at the Zoo) , 
or of postmen and policemen (such as they see in 
their street), the simplest form of clowning or 
of practical joke, the most photographically dull 
dialogue. For a grown-up it would be an appall- 
ing play to sit through, and still more appalling 
play to have to write. 

Perhaps you protest that your children love 
Peter Pan. Of course they do. They would be 
horrible children if they didn't. And they would 
be horrible children if they did not love (as I 
am sure they do) a Drury Lane pantomime. A 
nice child would love Hamlet. But I also love 
Peter Pan; and for this reason I feel that it can- 
not possibly be the ideal play for children. I do 
not, however, love the Drury Lane pantomime 
. . . which leaves me with the feeling that it may 
really be "the children's pantomime" after all. 



The Road to Knowledge 

MY pipe being indubitably smoked out to the 
last grain, I put it in my pocket and went 
slowly up to the nursery, trying to feel as much 
like that impersonation of a bear which would in- 
evitably be demanded of me as is possible to a 
man of mild temperament. But I had alarmed 
myself unnecessarily. There was no demand for 
bears. Each child lay on its front, engrossed in 
a volume of The Children's Encyclopedia. No- 
body looked up as I came in. Greatly relieved, 
I also took a volume of the great work and lay 
down on my front. I came away from my week- 
end a different man. For the first time in my life 
I was well informed. If you had only met me 
on the Monday and asked me the right ques- 
tions, I could have surprised you. Perhaps, even 
now . . . but alas ! my knowledge is slipping away 
from me, and probably the last of it will be gone 
before I have finished this article. 

For this Encyclopedia (as you may have read 
in the advertisements) makes a feature of answer- 

74 



The Road to Knowledge 75 

ing all those difficult questions which children ask 
grown-ups, and which grown-ups really want to 
ask somebody else. Well, perhaps not all those 
questions. There are two to which there were 
no answers in my volume, nor, I suspect, in any 
of the other volumes, and yet these are the two 
questions more often asked than any others. "How 
did God begin?" and "Where do babies come 
from?" Perhaps they were omitted because the 
answers to them are so easy. "That, my child, is 
something which you had better ask your 
mother," one replies; or if one is the mother, 
"You must wait till you are grown-up, dear." Nor 
did I see any mention of the most difficult ques- 
tion of all, the question of the little girl who had 
just been assured that God could do anything. 
"Then, if He can do anything, can He make a 
stone so heavy that He can't lift it?" Perhaps 
the editor is waiting for his second edition before 
he answers that one. But upon such matters as 
"Why does a stone sink?" or "Where does the 
wind come from?" or "What makes thunder?" 
he is delightfully Informing. 

But I felt all the time that in this part of his 
book he really had his eye on me and my genera- 
tion rather than on the children. No child wants 
to know why a stone sinks; it knows the answer 



76 If I May 

already — "What else could it do?'* Even Sir 
Isaac Newton was grown-up before he asked 
why an apple fell, and there had been men in 
the world fifty thousand years before that (yes, 
I have been reading The Outline of History, too), 
none of whom bothered his head about gravita- 
tion. Yes, the editor was thinking all the time 
that you and I ought to know more about these 
things. Of course, we should be too shy to order 
the book for ourselves, but we could borrow it 
from our young friends occasionally on the plea 
of seeing if it was suitable for them, and so pick 
up a little of that general knowledge which we 
lack so sadly. Where does the wind come from? 
Well, really, I don't think I know now. 

The drawback of all Guides to Knowledge is 
that one cannot have the editor at hand In order 
to cross-examine him. This is particularly so In 
the case of a Children's Encyclopedia, for the 
child's first question, "Why does this do that?" 
is meant to have no more finality than tossing-up 
at cricket or dealing the cards at bridge. The 
child does not really want to know, but it does 
want to keep up a friendly conversation, or, if 
humourously inclined, to see how long you can go 
on without getting annoyed. Not always, of 
course; sometimes it is really interested; but in 



The Road to Knowledge 77 

most cases, I suspect, the question, "What makes 
thunder?" is inspired by politeness or mischief. 
The grown-up is bursting to explain, and ought to 
be humoured; or else he obviously doesn't know, 
and ought to be shown up. 

But these would not be my motives if the editor 
of The Children's Encyclopedia took me for a 
walk and allowed me to ask him questions. The 
fact that light travels at so many hundred thou- 
sand miles an hour does not interest me; I should 
accept the information and then ask him my next 
question, "How did they find out?" That is al- 
ways the intriguing part of the business. Who 
first realized that light was not instantaneous? 
What put him up to it? How did he measure its 
velocity? The fact (to take another case) that 
a cricket chirps by rubbing his knees together does 
not interest me; I want to know ivhy he chirps. 
Is it involuntary, or is it done with the idea of 
pleasing? Why does a bird sing? The editor is 
prepared to tell me why a parrot is able to talk, 
but that is a much less intriguing matter. Why 
does a bird sing? I do not want an explanation 
of a thrush's song or a nightingale's, but why does 
a silly bird go on saying "chiff-chaff" all day long? 
Is it, for instance, happiness or hiccups? 

Possibly these things are explained in some 



78 If I May 

other volume than the one which fell to me. Pos- 
sibly they are inexplicable. We can dogmatize 
about a star a billion miles away, but we cannot 
say with certainty how an idea came to a man 
or a song to a bird. Indeed, I think, perhaps, it 
would have been wiser of me to have left the chiff- 
chaff out of it altogether. I have an uneasy feel- 
ing that ail last year the chiff-chaff was asking 
himself why I wrote every day. Was it invol- 
untary, he wondered, or was it done with the 
idea of pleasing? 



A Man of Property 

YES, a gardener's life is a disappointing one. 
When it was announced that we were just 
too late for everything this year, I decided to 
buy some ready-made gardens and keep them 
about the house, until such time as Nature was 
ready to co-operate. So now I have three gar- 
dens. This enables me to wear that superior look 
(which is so annoying for you) when you talk 
about your one little garden in front of me. Then 
you get off in disgust and shoot yourself, and they 
bury you in what you proudly called your herbace- 
ous border, and people wonder next year why the 
delphiniums are so luxuriant — ^but you are not 
there to tell them. 

Yes, I have three gardens. You come upon the 
first one as you are shown up the staircase to the 
drawing-room. It is outside the staircase win- 
dow. This is the daffodil garden — 3 ft. 8 ins. by 
9 ins. The vulgar speak of it as a window-box; 
that is how one knows that they are vulgar. The 
maid has her instructions; we are not at home 
when next they call. 

79 



8o If I May 

Sometimes I sit on the stairs and count the daf- 
fodils in my garden. There are seventy-eight of 
them ; seventy-eight or seventy-nine — I cannot say 
for certain, because they will keep nodding their 
heads, so that sometimes one may escape me, or 
perhaps I may count another one twice over. The 
wall round the daffodil garden is bright blue — I 
painted It myself, and still carry patterns of it 
about with me — and the result of all these yel- 
low heads on their long green necks waving above 
the blue walls of my garden is that we are always 
making excuses to each other for going up and 
down stairs, and the bell In the drawing-room Is 
never rung. 

But I have a fault to find with my daffodils. 
They turn their backs on us. It is natural, I sup- 
pose, that they do not care to look in at the win- 
dow to see what we are doing, preferring the blue 
sky and the sun, and all that they can catch of 
March and April, but the end of it is that we see 
too little of their faces; for even if they are 
trained in youth with a disposition towards the 
window, yet as soon as they begin to come to their 
full glory they swing round towards the south and 
hide their beauty from us. But the House Oppo- 
site sees them, and brings his visitors, you may 
be sure, to his window to look at them. Indeed, 



A Man of Property 8i 

I should not be surprised if he boasted of it as 
"his garden" and were even now writing in a book 
about it. 

My second garden is circular — 18 ins. in 
diameter, and, of course, more than that all the 
way round. I can see it now as I write — or, 
more accurately, if I stop writing for a moment — 
for it is just outside the library window. The 
vulgar call it a tub — they would ; actually it is the 
Tulip Garden. At least, the man says so. 

For the tulips have not bourgeoned yet. No, 
I am wrong. (That is the worst of using these 
difficult words.) They have bourgeoned, but 
they have not blossomed. Their heads are well 
above ground, they have swelled into buds, but the 
buds have not broken. So, for all I know, they 
may yet be sun-flowers. However, the man says 
they will be tulips; he was paid for tulips; and he 
assures me that he has had experience in these 
matters. For myself, I should never dare to speak 
with so much authority. It is not our birth but 
our upbringing which makes us what we are, and 
these tulips have had, during their short lives 
above ground, a fatherly care and a watchfulness 
neither greater nor less than were bestowed upon 
the daffodils. That they sprang from different 
bulbs seems to me a small matter in comparison 



82 If I May 

with this. However, the man says that they will 
be tulips. Presumably yellow ones. 

One's gardens get smaller and smaller. My 
third is only 1 1 ins. by 9 ins. The vulgar call it 
a Japanese garden — Indeed, I don't see what else 
they could call it. East is East and West is West 
and never the twain shall meet, but this does not 
prevent my Japanese garden from sitting on an 
old English refectory table in the dining-room. 

A Japanese garden needs very careful manage- 
ment. I have three native gardeners working at it 
day and night. At least they maintain the atti- 
tudes of men hard at work, but they don't seem 
to do much; perhaps they are afraid of throwing 
one another out of employment. The head gar- 
dener spends his time pointing to the largest 
cactus, and saying (I suppose in Japanese), "Look 
at my cactus !" The other two appear to be wash- 
ing his Sunday shirt for him, instead of pruning 
or potting out, which is what I pay them for. 
However, the whole scene is one of great activity, 
for in the ornamental water in the middle of the 
garden two fishermen are hard at it, hoping to 
land something for my breakfast. So far they 
have not had a bite. 

My Japanese garden has this advantage over 
the others, that it is independent of the seasons. 



A Man of Property 83 

The daffodils will bow their heads and droop 
away. The tulips — well, let us be sure that they 
are tulips first; but, if the man is correct, they too 
will wither. But the green hedgehog which 
friends tell me is a cactus will just go on and on. 
It must have some source of self-nourishment, for 
it can derive little from the sand whereon it 
rests. Perhaps, like most of us, it thrives on 
appreciation, and the gardener, who points to it 
so proudly day and night, is rightly employed 
after all. He knows that if once he dropped his 
hand, or looked the other way, the cactus would 
give it up disheartened. 

It is fortunate for you that I am writing this 
week, and not later, for I have now ordered three 
more gardens, circular ones, to sit outside the 
library. There is talk also of a couple of ever- 
green woods for the front of the house. With six 
gardens, two woods, and an ornamental lake I 
shall be unbearable. In all the gardens of Eng- 
land people will be shooting themselves in disgust, 
and the herbaceous borders will flourish as never 
before. But that is for the future. To-day I 
write only of my three gardens. I would write of 
them at greater length but that my daffodil gar- 
den is sending out an irresistible call. I go to sit 
on the staircase. 



An Ordnance Map 

SPRING calls to us to be up and about. It 
shouts to us to stand bareheaded upon hills 
and look down upon little woods and tiny red 
cottages, and away up to where the pines stand 
straight into the sky. Let the road, thin and 
white, wander on alone; we shall meet it again, 
and it shall lead us if it will to some comfortable 
inn; but now we are for the footpath and the stile 
— we are to stand in the fields and listen to the 
skylark. 

Must you stay and work in London? But you 
will have ten minutes to spare. Look, I have an 
ordnance map — let us take our walk upon that. 

We will start, if you please, at Buckley Cross. 
That is the best of walking on the map; you may 
start where you like, and there are no trains to 
catch. Our road goes north through the village 
— shall we stop a moment to buy an apple or 
two? Apples go well in the open air; we shall 
sit upon a gate presently and eat them before we 
light our pipes and join the road again. A pound, 

84 



An Ordnance Map 85 

if you will — and now with bulging pockets for 
the north. 

Over Buckley Common. You see by the dotted 
lines that it is an unfenced road, as, indeed, it 
should be over gorse and heather. A mile of it, 
and then it branches into two. Let us take this 
lane on the left; the way seems more wooded to 
the west. 

By now we should be passing Buckley Grove. 
Perhaps it is for sale. If so, we might stop for 
a minute or two and buy it. We can work out 
how many acres it is, because it is about three- 
quarters of an inch each way, and if we could only 
remember how many acres went to a square mile 
— well, anyhow, it is a good-sized place. But 
three miles from a station, you say? Ah yes, but 
look at that little mark there just round the 
corner. Do you know what that stands for? A 
wind pump. How jolly to have one at your very 
door. "Shall we go and look at the wind pump?" 
you would say casually to your guests. 

Let us leave the road. Do you see those dots 
going off to the right? That is a footpath. I 
have an idea that that will take us to the sky- 
lark. They do not mark skylarks on the map — 
I cannot say why — but something tells me that 
about a mile farther on, where the dots begin to 



86 If I May 

bend. . . . Ah, do you hear? Up and up and 
up he goes into the blue, fainter and fainter falls 
the music. He calls to us to follow him to the 
clean morning of the world, whose magic light has 
shone for us in our dreams so long, yet ever eluded 
us waking. Bathed in that light. Youth is not so 
young as we, nor Beauty more beautiful; in that 
light Happiness is ours at last, for Endeavour 
shall have its perfect fulfilment, a fulfilment with- 
out regret. . . . 

Yes, let us have an apple. 

Our path seems to end suddenly here. We shall 
have to go through this farm. All the dogs bark- 
ing, all the fowls cluttering, all the lambs gallop- 
ing — what a jolly, friendly commotion we've 
made ! But we can get into the road again this 
way. Indeed, we must get into the road soon be- 
cause it is hungry work out in the air, and two 
inches to the north-west is written a word full of 
meaning — the most purposeful word that can be 
written upon a map. "Inn." So now for a steady 
climb. We have dropped down to "200" by the 
farmhouse, and the inn is marked "500." But 
it is only two miles — well, barely that. Come 
along. 

What shall we have? Ought it not to be bread 
and cheese and beer? But if you will excuse me, 



An Ordnance Map 87 

I would rather not have beer. I know that it 
sounds well to ask for it — as far as that goes, I 
will ask for it willingly — but I have never been 
iable to drink it in any comfort. I think I shall 
have a gin and ginger. That also sounds well. 
More important still, it drinks well; in fact, the 
only thing which I don't like about it is the gin. 
"Oh, good morning. We want some bread and 
cheese, please, and one pint of beer, and a gin 
and ginger. And — er — you might leave out the 
gin." Yes, of course, I could have asked straight 
off for a plain ginger beer, but that sounds so very 
mild. My way I use the word "gin" twice. Let 
us be dashing on this brave day. 

After lunch a pipe, while we consider where to 
go next. 

It is anywhere you like, you know. To the 
north there is Greymoor Wood, and we pass a 
windmill; and to the east there is the little vil- 
lage of Colesford which has a church without a 
steeple; and to the west we go quite near an- 
other wind pump; and to the south — ^well, we 
should have to cross the line pretty soon. That 
brings us into touch with civilization; we do not 
want that just yet. So the north again let it 
be. . . . 

This is Greymoor Wood. Yes ; there is a foot- 



88 If I May 

path marked right through it, but footpaths are 
hard to see beneath such a carpet of dead leaves. 
I dare say we shall lose ourselves. One false step 
and we are off the line of dots. There you are, 
there's a dot missing. We have lost the track. 
Now we must get out as best we can. 

Do you know the way of telling the north by 
the sun? You turn the hour hand of your watch 
to the sun, and half-way between that and the XII 
is the south. Or else you turn the XII to the sun 
and take half-way between that and the hour 
hand. Anyhow you do find the south eventually 
after one or two experiments, and having dis- 
covered the south it is easy enough to locate the 
north. With your permission then we will push 
due north through Greymoor Wood. 

We are through and on the road, but it is 
getting late. Let us hurry on. It would be tempt- 
ing to wander down to that stream and follow its 
banks for a little; it would be pleasant to turn in- 
to that "unmetalled, unfenced" road — ah, doesn't 
one know those roads? — and let it carry us to 
the village of Milden, rich in both telegraph office 
and steeple. There is also, no more than two 
miles from where we stand, a contour of 600 ft. 
— shall wc make for the view at the top of that? 
But no, perhaps you are right. We had best be 



An Ordnance Map 89 

getting home now. It is growing chilly; the sun 
has gone in; if we lost ourselves again, we could 
never find the north. Let us make for the near- 
est station. Widdington, isn't it? Three miles 
away. . . . 

There ! Now we're home again. And must 
you really get on with your work? Well, but it 
has been a jolly day, hasn't it? 



The Lord Mayor 

THERE is a story of a boy who was asked to 
name ten animals which inhabit the polar 
regions. After a little thought he answered, "Six 
penguins and four seals." In the same way I 
suspect that, if you were asked to give the names 
of any three Lord Mayors of London, you would 
say, "Dick Whittington, and — er — Dick Whit- 
tington, and of course — er — Dick Whittington," 
knowing that he held that high office three times, 
and being quite unable to think of anybody else. 
This is where I have the advantage of you. In 
my youth there was a joke which went like this : 
"Why does the Lord Mayor like pepper? Be- 
cause without his K.N., he'd be ill." I have an 
unfortunate habit of remembering even the worst 
joke, and so I can tell you, all these years after, 
that there was once a Lord Mayor called Knill. 
It is because I know the names of four Lord 
Mayors that I can write with such authority upon 
the subject. 

To be a successful Lord Mayor demands years 
90 



The Lord Mayor 91 

of training. Fortunately, the aspiring appren- 
tice has time for preparation. From the moment 
when he is first elected a member of the Worship- 
ful Company of Linendrapers he can see it com- 
ing. He can say with confidence that in 1944 — 
or '43, if old Sir Joshua has his stroke next year, 
as seems probable — he will become the first citi- 
zen of London ; which gives him twenty-four years 
in which to acquire the manner. It would be 
more interesting if this were not so; it would be 
more interesting to you and me if there were 
something of a struggle each year for the Lord 
Mayorality, so that we could put our money on 
our respective fancies. If, towards the end of 
October, we could read the Haberdashers' nomi- 
nee had been for a stripped gallop on Hackney 
Downs and had pulled up sweating badly; if the 
Mayor could send a late wire from Aldgate to tell 
us that the candidate from the Drysalters' stable 
was refusing his turtle soup; if we could all try 
our luck at spotting the winner for November 9, 
then it is possible that the name of the new Lord 
Mayor might be as familiar in our mouths as that 
of this year's Derby favourite. As it is, there is 
no excitement at all about the business. We are 
told casually in a corner of the paper that Sir 
Tuttlebury Tupkins is to be the next Lord Mayor, 



92 If I May 

and we gather that It was Inevitable. The name 
conveys nothing to us, the face is the habitual 
face. He duly becomes Lord Mayor and loses his 
identity. We can still only think of Dick Whit- 
tington. 

One cannot help wondering If It Is worth It. He 
has his crowded year of glorious life, but it Is a 
year without a name. He is never himself, he 
Is just the Lord Mayor. He meets all the great 
people of the day, soldiers, sailors, statesmen, 
even artists, but they would never recognize him 
again. He cannot say that he knows them, even 
though he has given them the freedom of the City 
or a jewelled sword. He can do nothing to make 
his year of office memorable; nothing that Is, 
which his predecessor did not do before, or his 
successor will not do again. If he raises a Man- 
sion House Fund for the survivors of a flood, his 
predecessor had an earthquake, and his successor 
Is safe for a famine. And nobody will remember 
whether It was in this year or In Sir Joshua Potts' 
that the record was beaten. 

For this one year of anonymous greatness the 
aspiring Lord Mayer has to sacrifice his whole 
personality. He Is to be the first citizen of Lon- 
don, but he must be very careful that London has 
never heard of him before. He has to live the 



The Lord Mayor 93 

life of a hermit, resolute neither to know nor to 
be known. For a year he shakes hands mechan- 
ically, but in the years before and the years after- 
wards, nobody, I imagine, has ever smacked him 
on the back. Indeed, it is doubtful if anybody has 
even seen him, so remote is his life from ours. He 
was dedicated to this from birth, or anyhow from 
the moment when he was first elected a member 
of the Worshipful Company of Linendrapers, 
and he has been preparing that wooden expres- 
sion ever since. 

It is because he has had to spend so many years 
out of the world that a City Remembrancer is 
provided for him. The City Remembrancer 
stands at his elbow when he receives his guests 
and tells him who they are. Without this aid, 
how should he know? Perhaps it is Mr. Thomas 
Hardy who is arriving. "Mr. Thomas Hardy," 
says the gentleman with the voice, and the Lord 
Mayor holds out his hand. 

"I am very glad," he says, "to welcome such a 
very well-known — ^h'm — such a distinguished — 
er " 

"Writer," says the City Remembrancer behind 
the back of his hand. 

"Such a distinguished writer. The author of 
so many famous biog " 



94 If I May 

"Novels," breathes the City Remembrancer, 
gazing up at the ceiling. 

"So many famous novels," continues the Lord 
Mayor quite undisturbed, for he is used to it by 
this time. "The author of East Lynne " 

The City Remembrancer coughs and walks 
across to the other side of the Lord Mayor, mur- 
muring Tess of the D'Urbervilles to the back of 
the Mayoral head as he goes. The Lord Mayor 
then repeats that he is delighted to welcome the 
author of Death and the Door-bells to the City, 
and holds out his hand to Mr. John Sargent. 

"The painter," says the City Remembrancer, 
his lips, from long practice, hardly moving. 

In the sanctity of the home that evening, while 
removing his chains of office, the Lord Mayor 
(we may suppose) tells his sleepy wife what an 
Interesting day he has had, and how Mr. Thomas 
Sargent, the famous statesman, and Mr. John 
Hardy, the sculptor, both came to lunch. 

And all the time the year Is creeping on. An- 
other day gone. Another day nearer to that fatal 
November 8. . . . And here. Inevitably, Is No- 
vember 8, and by to-morrow he will be that most 
pathetic of all living creatures, an ex-Lord Mayor 
of London. Where do they live, the ex-Lord 
Mayors ? They must have a colony of their own 



The Lord Mayor 95 

somewhere, a Garden City in which they can live 
together as equals. Probably they have some ar- 
rangement by which they take it in turns to be 
reminiscent; Sir Tuttlebury Tupkins has "2nd 
Wednesdays" on his card, and Sir Joshua Potts 
receives on "3rd Mondays"; and the other Lord 
Mayors gather round and listen, nodding their 
heads. On their birthdays they give each other 
gold caskets, and every November 10 they march 
in a body to the station to welcome the new ar- 
rival. Poor fellow, the tears are streaming down 
his cheeks, and his paunch is shaken with sobs, but 
there is a hot bowl of turtle soup waiting for him 
at Lady Tupkins' house, The Mansion Cottage, 
and he will soon feel more comfortable. He has 
been allotted the "4th Fridays," and it is hoped 
that by Christmas he will have settled down quite 
happily at Ichabod Lodge. 



The Holiday Problem 

THE time for a summer holiday is May, June, 
July, August, and September — with, per- 
haps a fortnight In October if the weather holds 
up. But it is difficult to cram all this into the few 
short weeks allowed to most of us. We are faced 
accordingly with the business of singling out one 
month from the others — a business invidious 
enough to a lover of the country, but still more 
so to one who loves London as well. The ques- 
tion for him is not only which month is most 
wonderful by the sea, but also which month is 
most tolerable put of town. 

I would wash my hands of London in May and 
come back brown from cricket and golf and sail- 
ing in September with willingness. Alas I it Is 
impossible. But if I pick out July as the month 
for the open-air life, I begin immediately to think 
of the superiority of July over June as a month 
to spend in London. Not but what June is a 
delightful month in town, and May and August 
for that matter. In May, for instance 

96 



The Holiday Problem 97 

Let us go into this question. May, of course, 
is hopeless for a holiday. One must be near 
one's tailor in May to see about one's summer 
clothes. Choosing a flannel suit in May is one 
of the moments of one's life — only equalled by 
certain other great moments at the hosier's and 
hatter's. "Ne'er cast a clout till May be out" 
says a particularly idiotic saw, but as you have 
already disregarded it by casting your fur coat, 
you may as well go through with the business now. 
Socks; I ask you to think of summer socks. Have 
you ordered your half-hose yet? No. Then how 
can you go away for your holiday? 

Again, taxicabs pull down their shutters in 
May, and you are able to see and be seen as you 
drive through London. Never forget when you 
drive in a taxi that you own the car absolutely 
as long as the clock is ticking; that you are a 
motorist, a fit member for the Royal Automobile 
Club; that the driver is your chauffeur to obey 
your orders; and, best of all, that, May being 
here, you can put your feet upon the seat opposite 
in the sight of everybody. Will you miss the 
glory? In June and July it will have lost some- 
thing. Pay your five shillings in May and ex- 
pand, live; pay your five pounds if you like and 



98 If I May 

drive all down the Cromwell Road. Don't bury 
yourself in Devonshire. 

The long light evenings of June in London! 
The dances, the dinners in the warm nights of 
June ! The window-boxes in the squares, the 
pretty people in the parks; are we going to leave 
them? There is so much going on. We may not 
be in it, but we must be in London to feel that 
we are helping. They also serve who only stand 
and stare. Besides — I put it to you — strawber- 
ries are ripe in June. You will never get enough 
in Cumberland or wherever you are. Not good 
ones; not the shilling-a-seed kind. 

Is it wise to go away in July? What about the 
Varsity match and Gentlemen v. Players? You 
must be at Lord's for those. Yes; July is the 
month for Lord's. Drive there, I beg you, in a 
hansom, if indeed there is still one left. A taxi 
by all means in May or when you are in a hurry, 
but a day at Lord's must be taken deliberately. 
Drive there at your leisure; breathe deeply. Do 
not be afraid of taking your seat before play be- 
gins — you can buy a Sportsman on the ground and 
read how Pallingwick nearly beat Upper Finch- 
ley. It is all part of the great game, and if you 
are to enjoy your day truly, then you must go 
with this feeling in the back of your mind — that 



^ The Holiday Problem 99 

you ought really to be working. That Is the 
right condiment for a cricket match. 

Yes; we must be near St. John's Wood In July, 
but what about August? Everybody, you say, 
goes away In August; but is not that rather a rea- 
son for staying? I don't bother to point out that 
the country will be crowded, only that London 
will be so pleasantly empty. In August and Sep- 
tember you can wander about in your oldest 
clothes and nobody will mind. You can get a seat 
for any play without difficulty — indeed, without 
paying, If you know the way. It Is a rare time 
for seeing the old churches of the City or for 
exploring the South Kensington Museum. Lon- 
don Is not London In August and September; It 
Is a jolly old town that you have never seen be- 
fore. You can dine at the Savoy In your shirt 
sleeves — well, nearly. I mean, that gives you 
the Idea. And, best of all, your friends will all 
be enjoying themselves In the country, and they 
will ask you down for week-ends. Robinson, who 
Is having a cricket week for his schoolboy sons, 
and Smith, who has hired a yacht, will be glad to 
see you from Friday to Tuesday. If you had 
gone to Switzerland for the month, you couldn't 
have accepted their kind Invitations. "How I 
wish," you would have said as you paid the extra 



100 If I May 

centimes on their letters, "how I wish I had taken 
my hoHday in June." On the other hand, in 
June 

Well, you see how difficult it is for you. Of 
course, I don't really mind what you do. For 
myself I have almost decided to have a week in 
each month. The advantage of this is that I 
shall go away four times instead of once. There 
is no joy in the world to equal that of strolling 
after a London porter who is loolTmg for an 
empty smoker in which to put your golf clubs. 
To do it four times, each time with the knowledge 
of a week's holiday ahead, is almost more than 
man deserves. True that by this means I shall 
also come back four times instead of once, but 
to a lover of London that is no great matter. 
Indeed, I like it so. 

And another advantage is that I can take five 
weeks in this way while deluding my conscience 
into thinking that I am only taking four. A holi- 
day taken in a lump is taken and over. Taken in 
weeks, with odd days at each end of the weeks, 
it always leaves a margin for error. I shall take 
care that the error is on the right side. And if 
anybody grumbles, "Why, you're always going 
away," I shall answer with dignity, "Confound it! 
I'm always coming back." 



The Burlington Arcade 

IT is the fashion, I understand, to be late for 
dinner, but punctual for lunch. What the per- 
fect gentleman does when he accepts an invitation 
to breakfast I do not know. Possibly he has 
to be early. But for lunch the guests should ar- 
rive at the very stroke of the appointed hour, 
even though it leads to a certain congestion on 
the mat. 

My engagement was for one-thirty, and for a 
little while my reputation seemed to be in jeop- 
ardy. Two circumstances contributed to this. 
The first one was the ever-present difficulty in 
these busy days of synchronizing an arrival. A 
prudent man allows himself time for being pushed 
off the first half-dozen omnibuses and trusts to 
surging up with the seventh wave. I was so un- 
lucky as to cleave my way on to the first 'bus of 
all, with the result that when I descended from 
it I was a good ten minutes early. Well, that was 
bad enough. But, just as I was approaching the 
door, I realized that my calculations had been 

lOI 



102 If I May 

made for a one o'clock lunch. It was now ten 
to one; I had forty minutes in hand. 

It is very difficult to know what to do with forty 
minutes in the middle of Piccadilly, particularly 
when it is raining. Until a year ago I had had 
a club there, and I had actually resigned from it 
(how little one foresees the future!) on the plea 
that I never had occasion to use it. I felt that 
I would cheerfully have paid the subscription for 
the rest of my life in order to have had the loan 
of its roof at that moment. My new club — 
like the National Gallery and the British Museum, 
those refuges for the wet Londoner — was too far 
away. The Academy had not yet opened. 

And then a sudden inspiration drew me into 
the Burlington Arcade. They say that the 
churches of London are ill-attended nowadays, 
but at least St. James, Piccadilly, can have no 
cause for complaint, for I suppose that the mer- 
chants of the Arcade, and all those dependent 
on them, repair thither twice weekly to pray for 
wet weather. The Burlington Arcade is indeed 
a beautiful place on a wet day. One can move 
leisurely from window to window, passing from 
silk pyjamas to bead necklaces and from bead 
necklaces back to silk pyjamas again; one can 
look for a break in the weather from either the 



The Burlington Arcade 103 

north or the south; and at the south end there 
is a clock conveniently placed for those who have 
a watch waiting its turn at the repairer's and a 
luncheon engagement in forty minutes. 

For a long time I hesitated between a bead 
necklace and a pair of pyjamas. A few coloured 
stones on a chain were introduced to the umbrella- 
less onlooker as "The Latest Fashion," fol- 
lowed by the announcement, superfluous in the 
circumstances, that it was "Very Stylish." It 
came as a shock to read further that one could be 
in the fashion for so little a sum as six shillings. 
There were other necklaces at the same price but 
of entirely different design, which were equally 
"Stylish," and of a fashion no less up to date. In 
this the merchant seemed to me to have made a 
mistake; for the whole glory of wearing "The 
Latest Fashion" is the realization that the other 
woman has just missed it by a bead or two. A 
fashion must be exclusive. St. James, Piccadilly, 
is all very well, but one has also to consider how 
to draw the umbrella-less within after one has 
got their noses to the shop window. 

I passed on to the pyjamas, which seemed to be 
mostly in regimental colours. This war came 
upon us too suddenly, so that most of us rushed 
into the army without a proper consideration of 



104 If I May 

essentials. I doubt if anyone who enlisted in the 
early days stopped to ask himself whether the 
regimental colours would suit him. It will be dif- 
ferent in the next war. If anybody joins the 
Infantry at all (which is doubtful), he will at 
least join a regiment whose pyjamas may be worn 
with self-respect In the happy peace days. 

There are objections to turning up to lunch 
(however warmly Invited) with a pair of pyjamas 
under the arm. It looks as though you might 
stay too long. I moved on to another row of 
bead necklaces. They offered themselves for 
two shillings, and all that the owner could find 
to say for them was that they were "Quite New." 
If he meant that nobody had ever worn such a 
necklace before, he was probably right, but I 
feel that he could have done better for them than 
this, and that, "As supplied to the Queen of Den- 
mark," or something of the sort, would have 
justified an Increase to two and threepence. 

By this time nearly everybody was lunching 
except myself, and my clock said one twenty-five. 
If I were to arrive with that exact punctuality 
upon which I so credit myself, I must buy my 
bead necklace upon some other day. I said good- 
bye to the Burlington Arcade, and stepped out of 
it with the air of a man who has done a success- 



The Burlington Arcade 105 

ful morning's shopping. A clock in the hall was 
striking one-thirty as I entered. Then I remem- 
bered. It was Tuesday's lunch which was to be 
at one-thirty. To-day's was at one o'clock. . . 
However, I had discovered the Burlington Ar- 
cade. 



State Lotteries 

THE popular argument against the State Lot- 
tery is an assertion that it will encourage 
the gambling spirit. The popular argument in 
favour of the State Lottery is an assertion that 
it is hypocritical to say that it will encourage the 
gambling spirit, because the gambling spirit is 
already amongst us. Having listened to a good 
deal of this sort of argument on both sides, I 
thought it would be well to look up the word 
"gamble" in my dictionary. I found it next to 
"gamboge," and I can now tell you all about it. 
To gamble, says my dictionary, is "to play for 
money in games of skill or chance," and it adds 
the information that the word is derived from 
the Anglo-Saxon gamen, which means "a game". 
Now, to me this definition is particularly interest- 
ing, because it justifies all that I have been think- 
ing about the gambling spirit in connexion with 
Premium Bonds. I am against Premium Bonds, 
but not for the popular reason. I am against them 
because (as it seems to me) there is so very little 

io6 



State Lotteries 107 

of the gamble about them. And now that I have 
looked up "gamble" In the dictionary, I see that 
I was right. The "chance" element in a state lot- 
tery is obvious enough, but the "game" element 
is entirely absent. It is nothing so harmless and 
so human as the gambling spirit which Premium 
Bonds would encourage. 

We play for money in games of skill or chance 
— bridge, for Instance. But it isn't only of the 
money we are thinking. We get pleasure out of 
the game. Probably we prefer it to a game of 
greater chance, such as vingt-et-un. But even at 
vingt-et-un or baccarat there Is something more 
than chance which is taking a hand in the game; 
not skill, perhaps, but at least personality. If 
you are only throwing dice, you are engaged In 
a personal struggle with another man, and you 
are directing the struggle to this extent, that you 
can call the value of the stakes, and decide 
whether to go on or to stop. And is there any 
man who, having made a fortune at Monte Carlo, 
will admit that he owes It entirely to chance? 
Will he not rather attribute It to his wonderful 
system, or If not to that, at any rate to his won- 
derful nerve, his perseverance, or his reckless- 
ness? 

The "game" element, then, comes into all these 



io8 If I May 

forms of gambling, and still more strongly does 
it pervade that most common form of gambling, 
betting on horses. I do not suggest that the 
street-corner boy who puts a shilling both ways 
on Bronchitis knows anything whatever about 
horses, but at least he thinks he does; and if he 
wins five shillings on that happy afternoon when 
Bronchitis proves himself to be the 2.30 winner, 
his pleasure will not be solely in the money. The 
thought that he is such a skilful follower of form, 
that he has something of the national eye for a 
horse, will give him as much pleasure as can be 
extracted from the five shillings itself. 

This, then, is the gambling spirit. It has its 
dangers, certainly, but it is not entirely an evil 
spirit. It is possible that the State should not 
encourage it, but it is not called upon to exor- 
cise it with bell, and book, and candle. I am not 
sure that I should favour a State gamble, but my 
arguments against it would be much the same as 
my arguments against State cricket or the solemn 
official endowment and recognition of any other 
jolly game. However, I need not trouble you 
with those arguments now, for nothing so harm- 
less as a State gamble has ever been suggested. 
Instead, we have from time to time a State lot- 



State Lotteries 109 

tery offered to us, and that is a very different 
proposition. 

For in a State lottery — with daily prizes of 
£50,000 — the game (or gambling) element does 
not exist. Buy your £100 bond, as a thousand 
placards will urge you to do, and you simply take 
part in a cold-blooded attempt to acquire money 
without working for it. You can take no personal 
interest whatever in the manner of acquiring it. 
Somebody turns a handle, and perhaps your num- 
ber comes out. More probably it doesn't. If it 
doesn't, you can call yourself a fool for having 
thrown away your savings; If it does — well, you 
have got the money. May you be happy with 
it! But you have considerably less on which to 
congratulate yourself than had the street-corner 
boy who backed Bronchitis. He had an eye for 
a horse. Probably you hadn't even an eye for a 
row of figures. 

Moreover, the State would be giving its ofllcial 
approval to the unearned fortune. In these days, 
when the worker is asking for a week of so many 
less hours and so many more shillings, the State 
would answer: "I can show you a better way 
than that. What do you say to no work at all, 
and £20 a week for it?" At a time when the one 



no If I May 

cry Is "Production I" the State adds (behind its 
hand), "Buy a Premium Bond, and let the other 
man produce for ^om." After all these years in 
which we have been slowly progressing towards 
the idea of a more equitable distribution of 
wealth, the Government would show us the really 
equitable way; It would collect the savings of the 
many, and re-distribute them among the few. In- 
stead of a million ten-pound citizens, we should 
have a thousand ten-thousand-pounders and 
999,000 with nothing. That would be the official 
way of making the country happy and contented. 
But, in fact, our social and political controver- 
sies are not kept alive by such arguments as these, 
nor by the answers which can legitimately be made 
to such arguments. The case of the average 
man In favour of State lotteries Is, quite simply, 
that he does not like Dr. Clifford. The case of 
the average man against State lotteries is equally 
simple; he cannot bear to be on the same side 
as Mr. Bottomley. 



The Record Lie 

I HAVE just seen it quoted again. Yes, it 
appears solemnly In print, even now, at the 
end of the greatest war in history. Si vis pacem, 
para bellum. And the writer goes on to say that 
the League of Nations is all very well, but un- 
fortunately we are "not angels." Dear, dear! 

Being separated for the moment from my book 
of quotations, I cannot say who was the Roman 
thinker who first gave this brilliant paradox to 
the world, but I imagine him a fat, easy-going 
gentleman, who occasionally threw off good things 
after dinner. He never thought very much of 
Si vis pacem, para bellum: it was not one of his 
best; but it seemed to please some of his political 
friends, one of whom asked if he might use it in 
his next speech in the Senate. Our fat gentleman 
said: "Certainly, If you like," and added, with 
unusual frankness : "I don't quite know what it 
means." But the other did not think that that 
would matter very much. So he quoted It, and 
It had a considerable vogue . ,. . and by and by 

III 



112 If I May 

they returned to the place from which they had 
come, leaving behind them the record of 
the ages, the lie which has caused more suffering 
than anything the Devil could have invented for 
himself. Two thousand years from now people 
will still be quoting it, and killing each other on 
the strength of it. Or perhaps I am wrong. Per- 
haps two thousand years from now, if the Eng- 
lish language is sufficiently dead by then, the 
world will have some casual paradox of Bernard 
Shaw's or Oscar Wilde's on its lips, passing it 
reverently from mouth to mouth as if It were 
Holy Writ, and dropping bombs on Mars to show 
that they know what It means. For a quotation 
is a handy thing to have about, saving one the 
trouble of thinking for oneself, always a labori- 
ous business. 

Si vis pacem, para bellum. Yes, It sounds 
well. It has a conclusive ring about It, particularly 
If the speaker stops there for a moment and 
drinks a glass of water. "If you want peace, pre- 
pare for war," Is not quite so convincing; that 
might have been his own Idea, evolved while 
running after a motor-bus in the morning; we 
should not be so ready to accept It as Gospel. 

But Si vis pacem 1 It is almost blasphemous 

to doubt It. 



The Record Lie 113 

Suppose for a moment that it is true. Well, 
but this certainly is true: Si vis bellum, para 
helium. So it follows that preparation for war 
means nothing; it does not necessarily mean that 
you want war, it does not necessarily mean that 
you want peace; it is an action which is as likely 
to have been inspired by an evil motive as by a 
good motive. When a gentleman with a van 
calls for your furniture you have means of ascer- 
taining whether he is the furniture-remover whom 
you ordered or the burglar whom you didn't order, 
but there is no way of discovering which of two 
Latin tags is inspiring a nation's armaments. 
Si vis pacem, para bellum — it is a delightful ex- 
cuse. Germany was using it up to the last mo- 
ment. 

However, I can produce a third tag in the same 
language, which is worth consideration. Si vis 
amare bellum, para bellum — said by Quintus Bal- 
bus the Younger five minutes before he was called 
a pro-Carthaglnlan. There seems to be some- 
thing in it. I have been told by women that it 
is great fun putting on a new frock, but I under- 
stand that they like going out in it afterwards. 
After years In the schools a painter does want to 
show the public what he has learnt. Soldiers 
who have given their lives to preparing for war 



114 If I May 

may be different; they may be quite content to 
play about at manoeuvres and answer examination 
papers. I learnt my golf (such as it is) by driving 
into a net. Perhaps, if I had had the soldier's 
temperament, I should still be driving into a net 
quite happily. On the other hand, soldiers may 
be just like other people, and having prepared 
for a thing may want to do it. 

No; it is a pity, but Universal Peace will hardly 
come as the result of universal preparedness for 
war, as these dear people seem to hope. It will 
only come as the result of a universal feeling that 
war is the most babyish and laughably idiotic 
thing that this poor world has evolved. Our 
writer says sadly that there is no hope of doing 
without armies — ^we are not angels. It is not a 
question of "not being angels," it is a question of 
not being childish lunatics. Possibly there is no 
hope of this either, but I think we might make an 
effort. 

For opinions do spread. If one holds them 
firmly oneself and is not afraid of confessing 
them. A si-vis-pacem gentleman said to me once, 
with a sneer: "How are you going to do it? 
Speeches and pamphlets?" Well, that was how 
Christianity got about, even though Paul's let- 
ters did not appear in a daily paper with a circu- 



The Record Lie 115 

lation of a million and a telegraphic service to 
every part of the world. 

But perhaps Christianity is an unfortunate ex- 
ample to give in an argument about war; one 
begins to ask oneself if Christianity has spread 
as much as one thought. There are dear people, 
of course, to whom It has been revealed in the 
night that God is really much more Interested in 
nations than in persons; It is not your soul or my 
soul that He Is concerned about, but the British 
Empire's. Germany He dislikes (although the 
Germans were under a silly misapprehension about 
this once), and though the Japanese do not wor- 
ship Him, yet they are such active little fellows, 
not to say Allies of England, that they too are 
under His special protection. And when He dep- 
recated lying and stealing and murder and bear- 
ing false witness, and all those things, He meant 
that if they were done in a really wholesale way 
— by nations, not by individuals — then it did not 
matter; for He can forgive a nation anything, 
having so much more Interest in It. All of which 
may be true, but it Is not Christianity. 

However, as our writer says, "we are not an- 
gels," and apparently he thinks that it would be 
rather wicked of us to try to be. Perhaps he is 
right. 



Wedding Bells 

CHAMPAGNE is often pleasant at lunch, It 
is always delightful at dinner, and it is an 
absolute necessity, if one is to talk freely about 
oneself afterwards, at a dance supper. But cham- 
pagne for tea is horrible. Perhaps this is why 
a wedding always finds me melancholy next mor- 
ning. "She has married the wrong man," I say 
to myself. "I wonder If it Is too late to tell her." 

The trouble of answering the invitation and of 
thinking of something to give more original than 
a toast rack should, one feels, have its compen- 
sations. From each wedding that I attend I 
expect an afternoon's enjoyment in return for my 
egg stand. For one thing I have my best clothes 
on. Few people have seen me In them (and these 
few won't believe it), so that from the very be- 
ginning the day has a certain freshness. It Is 
not an ordinary day. It starts with this advan- 
tage, that in my best clothes I am not difficult to 
please. The world smiles upon me. 

Once I am In church, however, my calm begins 
Ii6 



Wedding Bells 117 

to leave me. As time wears on, and the organist 
invents more and more tunes, I tremble lest the 
bride has forgotten the day. The choir is wait- 
ing for her; the bridegroom is waiting for her. 
I — I also — wait. What if she has changed her 
mind at the last minute? But no. The organist 
has sailed into his set piece; the choir advances; 
follows the bride looking so lonely that I long to 
comfort her and remind her of my egg stand; and, 
last of all, the pretty bridesmaids. The clergy- 
man begins his drone. 

You would think that, reassured by the pres- 
ence of the bride, I could be happy now. But 
there is still much to bother me. The bridegroom 
is showing signs of having forgotten his part, the 
bride can't get her glove off, one of the brides- 
maids is treading on my hat. Worse than all this, 
there is a painful want of unanimity among the 
congregation as to when we stand up and when 
we sit down. Sometimes I am alone and sitting 
when everybody else is standing, and that is easy 
to bear; but sometimes I find myself standing 
when everybody else Is sitting, and that Is very 
hard. 

They have gone to the vestry. The choir 
sings an anthem to while away the kissing-time, 
and, right or wrong, I am sitting down, comfort- 



ii8 If I May 

ing my poor hat. There was a time when I, too, 
used to go into the vestry; when I was some- 
thing of an authority on weddings, and would 
attend weekly in some minor official capacity. Any 
odd jobs that were going seemed to devolve on 
me. If somebody was wanted suddenly to sign 
the register, or kiss the bride's mother, or wind 
up the going-away car, It used to be taken for 
granted that I was the man to do It. I wore a 
white flower In my button-hole to show that I 
was available. I served, I may say, In an en- 
tirely honorary capacity, except in so far as I 
was expected to give the happy pair a slightly 
larger present than the others. One day I hap- 
pened to suggest to an Intending groom that he 
had other friends more ornamental, and there- 
fore more suitable for this sort of work, than I; 
to which he replied that they were all married, 
and that etiquette demanded a bachelor for the 
business. Of course, as soon as I heard this I 
got married too. 

Here they come. "Doesn't she look sweet?" 
We hurry after them and rush for the carriages. 
I am only a friend of the bridegroom's; perhaps 
I had better walk. 

It must be very easy to be a guest at a wedding 
reception, where each of the two clans takes it for 



Wedding Bells 119 

granted that all the extraordinary strangers be- 
long to the other clan. Indeed, nobody with one 
good suit, and a stomach for champagne and sand- 
wiches, need starve in London. He or she can 
wander safely in wherever a red carpet beckons. 
I suppose I must put in an appearance at this 
reception, but if I happen to pass another piece 
of carpet on the way to the house, and the people 
going in seem more attractive than our lot, I 
shall be tempted to join them. 

This is, perhaps, the worst part of the cere- 
mony, this three hundred yards or so from the 
hymn-sheets to the champagne. All London is 
now gazing at my old top-hat. When the war 
went on and on and on, and it seemed as though 
it were going on for ever, I looked back on peace 
much as those old retired warriors at the end 
of last century looked back on their happy Cri- 
mean days; and in the same spirit as that in which 
they hung their swords over the baronial fireplace, 
I decided to suspend my old top-hat above the 
mantel-piece in the drawing-room. In the years 
to come I would take my grandchildren on my 
knee and tell them stories of the old days when 
grandfather was a civilian, of desperate charges 
by church-wardens and organists, and warm re- 
ceptions; and sometimes I would hold the old 



120 If I May 

top-hat reverently in my hands, and a sudden 
gleam would come into my eyes, so that those 
watching me would say to each other, "He is 
thinking of that tea-fight at Rutland Gate in 
19 12." So I pictured the future for my top-hat, 
never dreaming that in 1920 it would take the 
air again. 

For I went into the war in order to make the 
world safe for democracy, which I understood to 
mean (and was distinctly informed so by the 
press) a world safe for those of us who prefer 
soft hats with a dent in the middle. "The war," 
said the press, "has killed the top-hat." Appar- 
ently it failed to do this, as it failed to do so 
many of the things which we hoped from it. So 
the old veteran of 19 12 dares the sunlight again. 

We are arrived, and I am greeted warmly by 
the bride's parents. I look at the mother closely 
so that I shall know her again when I come to say 
good-bye, and give her a smile which tells her 
that I was determined to come down to this 
wedding although I had a good deal of work to 
do. I linger with the idea of pursuing this point, 
for I want them to know that they nearly missed 
me, but I am pushed on by the crowd behind me. 
The bride and bridegroom salute me cordially but 



Wedding Bells 121 

show no desire for intimate gossip. A horrible 
feeling goes through me that my absence would 
not have been commented upon by them at any 
inordinate length. It would not have spoilt the 
honeymoon, for instance. 

I move on and look at the presents. The pres- 
ents are numerous and costly. Having discovered 
my own I stand a little way back and listen to the 
opinions of my neighbours upon it. On the whole 
the reception is favourable. The detective, I am 
horrified to discover, is on the other side of the 
room, apparently callous as to the fate of my egg 
stand. I cannot help feeling that if he knew his 
business he would be standing where I am stand- 
ing now; or else there should be two detectives. 
It is a question now whether it is safe for me to 
leave my post and search for food. . . Now he is 
coming round; I can trust it to him. 

On my way to the refreshments I have met an 
old friend. I like to meet my friends at weddings, 
but I wish I had not met this one. She has sowed 
the seeds of disquiet in my mind by telling me 
that it is not etiquette to begin to eat until the 
bride has cut the cake. I answer, "Then why 
-doesn't somebody tell the bride to cut the cake ?" 
but the bride, it seems, is busy. I wish now that I 



122 If I May 

had not met my friend. Who but a woman would 
know the etiquette of these things, and who but a 
woman would bother about it? 

The bride Is cutting the cake. The bridegroom 
has lent her his sword, or his fountain-pen, what- 
ever is the emblem of his trade — he is a stock- 
broker — and as she cuts, we buzz round her, hop- 
ing for one of the marzipan pieces. I wish to 
leave now, before I am sorry, but my friend tells 
me that It Is not etiquette to leave until the bride 
and bridegroom have gone. Besides, I must drink 
the bride's health. I drink her health; hers, not 
mine. 

Time rolls on. I was wrong to have had cham- 
pagne. It doesn't suit me at tea. However, for 
the moment life is bright enough. I have looked 
at the presents and my own is still there. And 
I have been given a bagful of confetti. The weary 
weeks one lives through without a handful of 
anything to throw at anybody. How good to be 
young again. I take up a strong position in the 
hall. 

They come. . . Got him — got him! Now a 
long shot — got him! I feel slightly better, and 
begin the search for my hostess, . . . 

I have shaken hands with all the bride's aunts, 
and all the bridegroom's aunts, and In fact all the 



Wedding Bells 123 

aunts of everybody here. Each one seems to me 
more like my hostess than the last. "Good-bye !" 
Fool — of course — there she is. "Good-Bye !" 

My hat and I take the air again. A pleasant 
afternoon; and yet to-morrow morning I shall see 
things more clearly, and I shall know that the 
bridegroom has married the wrong girl. But it 
will be too late then to save him. 



Public Opinion 

AT the beginning of the last strike the papers 
announced that Public Opinion was firmly 
opposed to dictation by a minority. Towards the 
end of the strike the papers said that Public 
Opinion was strongly in favour of a settlement 
which would leave neither side with a sense of 
defeat. I do not complain of either of these 
statements, but I have been wondering, as I have 
often wondered before, how a leader-writer dis- 
covers what the Public Opinion is. 

When one reads about Public Opinion in the 
press (and one reads a good deal about it one 
way and another), it is a little difficult to realize, 
particularly if the printer has used capital letters, 
that this much-advertised Public Opinion is sim- 
ply You and Me and the Others. Now, since it 
is impossible for any man to get at the opinions 
of all of us, it is necessary that he should content 
himself with a sample half-dozen or so. But 
from where does he get his sample? Possibly 
from his own club, limited perhaps to men of his 

124 



Public Opinion 125 

own political opinions; almost certainly from his 
own class. Public Opinion in this case is simply 
what he thinks. Even if he takes the opinion of 
strangers — the waiter who serves him at lunch, 
the tobacconist, the policeman at the corner — the 
opinion may be one specially prepared for his 
personal consumption, one inspired by tact, bore- 
dom, or even a sense of humour. If, for instance, 
the process were to be reversed, and my tobaccon- 
ist were to ask me what I thought of the strike, 
I should grunt and go out of his shop; but he 
would be wrong to attribute "a dour grimness" 
to the nation in consequence. 

Nor is the investigator likely to be more correct 
if he judges Public Opinion from the evidence of 
his eyes rather than his ears. Thus one reporter 
noticed on the faces of his companions in the om- 
nibus "a look of stern determination to see this 
thing through." If they were all really looking 
like that, it must have been an impressive sight. 
But it is at least possible that this distinctive look 
was one of stern determination to get a more 
comfortable seat on the 'bus which took them 
home again. 

It must be very easy (and would certainly be 
extremely interesting) to go about forming Public 
Opinion. I should like to initiate an L.F.P.O., 



126 If I May 

or League for Forming Public Opinion, and not 
only for forming it, but for putting it, when 
formed, into direct action. Such a League, even 
if limited to two hundred members, could by its 
concerted action exercise a very remarkable effect. 
Suppose we decided to attack profiteering. We 
should choose our shop — a hosier's, let us say. 
Beginning on Monday morning, a member of the 
League would go in and ask to be shown some 
ties. Having spent some time in looking through 
the stock and selecting a couple, he would ask the 
price. "Oh, but that's ridiculous," he would say. 
"I couldn't think of paying that. If I can't 
get them cheaper somewhere else, I'll do 
without them altogether." The shopman shrugs 
his shoulders and puts his ties back again. Per- 
haps he tells himself contemptuously that he 
doesn't cater for that sort of customer. The cus- 
tomer goes out, and half an hour later the second 
member of the League arrives. This one asks 
for collars. He is equally indignant at the price, 
and is equally determined not to wear a collar at 
all rather than submit to such extortion. Half an 
hour later the third member comes in. He wants 
socks. . . . The fourth member wants ties again. 
. . . The fifth wants gloves. . . . 



Public Opinion 127 

Now this is going on, not only all through the 
day, but all through the week, and for another 
week after that. Can you not imagine that, after 
a fortnight of it, the haberdasher begins to feel 
that "Public Opinion is strongly aroused against 
profiteering in the hosiery trade"? Is it not pos- 
sible that the loss of two hundred customers in a 
fortnight would make him wonder whether a 
lower price might not bring him in a greater 
profit? I think it is possible. I do not think he 
could withstand a Public Opinion so well organ- 
ized and so relentlessly concentrated. 

But such a League would have enormous power 
in many ways. If you were to write to the editor 
of a paper complaining that So-and-So's contri- 
butions (mine, if you like) were beneath con- 
tempt, the editor would not be seriously concerned 
about it. Possibly he had a letter the day before 
saying that So-and-So was beyond all other 
writers delightful. But if twenty members of the 
League wrote every week for ten weeks in suc- 
cession, from two hundred different addresses, 
saying that So-and-So's articles were beneath con- 
tempt, the editor would be more than human if 
he did not tell himself that So-and-So had fallen 
off a little and was obviously losing his hold on 



128 If I May 

the popular imagination. In a little while he 
would decide that it would be wiser to make a 
change. . . . 

Of course, the League would not attack a 
writer or any other public man from sheer wil- 
fulness, but it would probably have no difficulty 
in bringing down over-praised mediocrity to its 
proper level or in giving a helping hand to unrec- 
ognized talent. But unless its president were a 
man of unerring judgment and remarkable re- 
straint, its sense of power would probably be too 
much for it, and it would lose its head altogether. 
Looking round for a suitable president, I can 
think of nobody but myself. And I am too busy 
just now. 



The Honour of Your Country 

WE were resting after the first battle of the 
Somme. Naturally all the talk in the 
Mess was of after-the-war. Ours was the H.Q. 
Mess, and I was the only subaltern ; the youngest 
of us was well over thirty. With a gravity befit- 
ting our years and (except for myself) our rank, 
we discussed not only restaurants and revues, 
but also Reconstruction. 

The Colonel's idea of Reconstruction included 
a large army of conscripts. He did not call them 
conscripts. The fact that he had chosen to be a 
soldier himself, out of all the professions open to 
him, made it difficult for him to understand why 
a million others should not do the same without 
compulsion. At any rate, we must have the men. 
The one thing the war had taught us was that we 
must have a real Continental army. 

I asked why. "Theirs not to reason why" on 
parade, but in the H.Q. Mess on active service the 
Colonel is a fellow human being. So I asked 
him why we wanted a large army after the war. 

129 



130 If I May 

For the moment he was at a loss. Of course, 
he might have said "Germany," had it not been 
decided already that there would be no Germany 
after the war. He did not like to say "France," 
seeing that we were even then enjoying the hos- 
pitality of the most delightful French villages. 
So, after a little hesitation, he said "Spain." 

At least he put it like this: — 

"Of course, we must have an army, a large 
army." 

"But why?" I said again. 

"How else can you — can you defend the honour 
of your country?" 

"The Navy." 

"The Navy! Pooh I The Navy isn't a wea- 
pon of attack; it's a weapon of defence." 

"But you said 'defend'." 

"Attack," put in the Major oracularly, "is the 
best defence." 

"Exactly." 

I hinted at the possibilities of blockade. The 
Colonel was scornful. "Sitting down under an 
insult for months and months," he called it, until 
you starved the enemy into surrender. He wanted 
something much more picturesque, more immedi- 
ately effective than that. (Something, presum- 
ably, more like the Somme.) 



The Honour of Your Country 131 

"But give me an example," I said, "of what 
you mean by 'insults' and 'honour'." 

Whereupon he gave me this extraordinary ex- 
ample of the need for a large army. 

"Well, supposing," he said, "that fifty English 
women in Madrid were suddenly murdered, what 
would you do?'^ 

I thought for a moment, and then said that I 
should probably decide not to take my wife to 
Madrid until things had settled down a bit. 

"I'm supposing that you're Prime Minister," 
said the Colonel, a little annoyed. "What is 
England going to do?" 

"Ah! . . . Well, one might do nothing. After 
all, what is one to do? One can't restore them to 
life." 

The Colonel, the Major, even the Adjutant, 
expressed his contempt for such a cowardly policy. 
So I tried again. 

"Well," I said, "I might decide to murder fifty 
Spanish women in London, just to even things 
up." 

The Adjutant laughed. But the Colonel was 
taking it too seriously for that. 

"Do you mean it?" he asked. 

"Well, what would you do, sir?" 

"Land an army in Spain," he said promptly, 



132 If I May 

"and show them what it meant to treat English 
women like that." 

"I see. They would resist of course?" 

"No doubt." 

"Yes. But equally without doubt we shouio 
win in the end?" 

"Certainly." 

"And so re-establish England's honour." 

"Quite so." 

"I see. Well, sir, I really think my way is the 
better. To avenge the fifty murdered English 
women, you are going to kill (say) 100,000 
Spaniards who have had no connexion with the 
murders, and 50,000 Englishmen who are even 
less concerned. Indirectly also you will cause 
the death of hundreds of guiltless Spanish wo- 
men and children, besides destroying the happi- 
ness of thousands of English wives and mothers. 
Surely my way — of murdering only fifty innocents 
— is just as effective and much more humane." 

"That's nonsense," said the Colonel shortly. 

"And the other is war." 

We were silent for a little, and then the Colonel 
poured himself out a whisky. 

"All the same," he said, as he went back to 
his seat, "you haven't answered my question." 

"What was that, sir?" 



The Honour of Your Country 133 

"What you would do in the case I mentioned. 
Seriously." 

"Oh! Well, I stick to my first answer. I 
would do nothing — except, of course, ask for an 
explanation and an apology. If you can apolo- 
gize for that sort of thing." 

"And if they were refused?" 

"Have no more official relations with Spain." 

"That's all you would do?" 

"Yes." 

"And you think that that is consistent with 
the honour of a great nation like England?" 

"Perfectly." 

"Oh ! Well, I don't." 

An indignant silence followed. 

"May I ask you a question now, sir?" I said 
at last. 

"Well?" 

"Suppose this time England begins. Suppose 
we murder all the Spanish women in London first. 
What are you going to do — as Spanish Premier?" 

"Er— I don't quite " 

"Are you going to order the Spanish Fleet to 
sail for the mouth of the Thames, and hurl itself 
upon the British fleet?" 

"Of course not. She has no fleet." 

"Then do you agree with the — er Spanish 



134 If I May 

Colonel, who goes about saying that Spain's hon- 
our will never be safe until she has a fleet as big 
as England's?" 

"That's ridiculous. They couldn't possibly." 

"Then what could Spain do in the circum- 
stances?" 

"Well, she — er — she could — er — protest." 

"And would that be consistent with the honour 
of a small nation like Spain?" 

"In the circumstances," said the Colonel un- 
willingly, "er — ^yes." 

"So that what it comes to is this. Honour 
only demands that you should attack the other 
man if you are much bigger than he is. When a 
man insults my wife, I look him carefully over; 
if he is a stone heavier than I, then I satisfy my 
honour by a mild protest. But if he only has one 
leg, and is three stone lighter, honour demands 
that I should jump on him." 

"We're talking of nations," said the Colonel 
gruffly, "not of men. It's a question of prestige." 

"Which would be increased by a victory over 
Spain?" 

The Major began to get nervous. After all, 
I was only a subaltern. He tried to cool the at- 
mosphere a little. 



The Honour of Your Country 135 

"I don't know why poor old Spain should be 
dragged into it like this," he said, with a laugh. "I 
had a very jolly time in Madrid years ago." 

''O, I only gave Spain as an example," said 
the Colonel casually. 

"It might just as well have been Switzerland?" 
I suggested. 

There was silence for a little. 

"Talking of Switzerland " I said, as I 

knocked out my pipe. 

"Oh, go on," said the Colonel, with a good- 
humoured shrug. "I've brought this on myself." 

"Well, sir, what I was wondering was — What 
would happen to the honour of England if fifty 
English women were murdered at Interlaken?" 

The Colonel was silent. 

"However large an army we had " I went 

on. 

The Colonel struck a match. 

"It's a funny thing, honour," I said. "And 
prestige." 

The Colonel pulled at his pipe. 

"Just fancy," I murmured, "the Swiss can do 
what they like to British subjects in Switzerland, 
and we can't get at them. Yet England's honour 
does not suffer, the world is no worse a place to 



136 If I May 

live in, and one can spend quite a safe holiday 
at Interlaken." 

"I remember being there in '94," began the 
Major hastily , , ,. , 



A Village Celebration 

ALTHOUGH our village is a very small one, 
we had fifteen men serving in the Forces 
before the war was over. Fortunately, as the 
Vicar well said, "we were wonderfully blessed in 
that none of us was called upon to make the great 
sacrifice." Indeed, with the exception of Charlie 
Rudd, of the Army Service Corps, who was called 
upon to be kicked by a horse, the village did 
not even suffer any casualties. Our rejoicings at 
the conclusion of Peace were whole-hearted. 

Naturally, when we met to discuss the best way 
in which to give expression to our joy, our first 
thoughts were with our returned heroes. Miss 
Travers, who plays the organ with considerable 
expression on Sundays, suggested that a drinking 
fountain erected on the village green would be a 
pleasing memorial of their valour, if suitably 
inscribed. For instance, it might say, "In grati- 
tude to our brave defenders who leaped to answer 
their country's call," followed by their names. 
Embury, the cobbler, who is always a wet blanket 

137 



138 If I May 

on these occasions, asked if "leaping" was the 
exact word for a young fellow who got into khaki 
in 19 1 8, and then only in answer to his country's 
police. The meeting was more lively after this, 
and Mr. Bates, of Hill Farm, had to be person- 
ally assured by the Vicar that for his part he 
quite understood how it was that young Robert 
Bates had been unable to leave the farm before, 
and he was sure that our good friend Embury 
meant nothing personal by his, if he might say 
so, perhaps somewhat untimely observation. He 
would suggest himself that some such phrase as 
"who gallantly answered" would be more in keep- 
ing with Miss Travers' beautiful idea. He would 
venture to put it to the meeting that the inscrip- 
tion should be amended in this sense. 

Mr. Clayton, the grocer and draper, inter- 
rupted to say that they were getting on too fast. 
Supposing they agreed upon a drinking fountain, 
who was going to do it? Was it going to be 
done in the village, or were they going to get 
sculptors and architects and such-like people from 

London? And if so The Vicar caught the 

eye of Miss Travers, and signalled to her to pro- 
ceed; whereupon she explained that, as she had 
already told the Vicar in private, her nephew was 
studying art in London, and she was sure he would 



A Village Celebration 139 

be only too glad to get Augustus James or one 
of those Academy artists to think of something 
really beautiful. 

At this moment Embury said that he would like 
to ask two questions. First question — In what 
order were the names of our gallant defenders 
to be inscribed? The Vicar said that, speaking 
entirely without preparation and on the spur of 
the moment, he would imagine that an alphabeti- 
cal order would be the most satisfactory. There 
was a general "Hear, hear," led by the Squire, 
who thus made his first contribution to the de- 
bate. "That's what I thought," said Embury. 
"Well, then, second question — What's coming 
out of the fountain?" The Vicar, a little sur- 
prised, said that presumably, my dear Embury, 
the fountain would give forth water. "Ah!" 
said Embury with great significance, and sat down. 

Our village is a little slow at getting on to 
things; "leaping" is not the exact word for our 
movements at any time, either of brain or body. 
It is not surprising, therefore, that even Bates 
failed to realize for a moment that his son's 
name was to have precedence on a water-fountain. 
But when once he realized it, he refused to be 
pacified by the cobbler's explanation that he had 
only said "Ah!" Let those who had anything 



140 If I May 

to say, he observed, speak out openly, and then 
we should know where we were. Embury's an- 
swer, that one could generally guess where some 
people were, and not be far wrong, was drowned 
in the ecclesiastical applause which greeted the 
rising of the Squire. 

The Squire said that he- — er — hadn't — er — in- 
tended — er — to say anything. But he thought 
— er — if he might — er — intervene — to — er — say 
something on the matter of — er — a matter which 
— er — well, they all knew what it was — in short 
— er — money. Because until they knew how they 
— er — stood, it was obvious that — it was obvious 
— quite obvious — well it was a question of how 
they stood. Whereupon he sat down. 

The Vicar said that as had often happened be- 
fore, the sound common-sense of Sir John had 
saved them from undue rashness and precipitancy. 
They were getting on a little too fast. Their 
valued friend Miss Travers had made what he 
was not ashamed to call a suggestion both rare 
and beautiful, but alas ! in these prosaic modern 
days the sordid question of pounds, shillings and 
pence could not be wholly disregarded. How 
much money would they have? 

Everybody looked at Sir John. There was an 
awkward silence, in which the Squire joined. . . . 



A Village Celebration 141 

Amid pushlngs and whisperings from his cor- 
ner of the room, Charlie Rudd said that he would 
just lilce to say a few words for the boys, if all 
were willing. The Vicar said that certainly, cer- 
tainly he might, my dear Rudd. So Charlie said 
that he would just like to say that with all respect 
to Miss Travers, who was a real lady, and many 
was the packet of fags he'd had from her out 
there, and all the other boys could say the same, 
and if some of them joined up sooner than others, 
well perhaps they did, but they all tried to do 
their bit, just like those who stayed at home, and 
they'd thrashed Jerry, and glad of it, fountains 
or no fountains, and pleased to be back again and 
see them all, just the same as ever, Mr. Bates 
and Mr. Embury and all of them, which was all 
he wanted to say, and the other boys would say 
the same, hoping no offence was meant, and that 
was all he wanted to say. 

When the applause had died down, Mr. Clay- 
ton said that, in his opinion, as he had said before, 
they were getting on too fast. Did they want a 
fountain, that was the question. Who wanted it? 
The Vicar replied that it would be a beautiful 
memento for their children of the stirring times 
through which their country had passed. Embury 
asked if Mr. Bates' child wanted a memento of 



142 If I May 

"This is a gene"al question, my dear Em- 



bury," said the Vicar. 

There rose slowly to his feet the landlord of 
the Dog and Duck. Celebrations, he said. We 
were celebrating this here peace. Now, as man 
to man, what did celebrations mean? He asked 
any of them. What did it mean? Celebrations 
meant celebrating, and celebrating meant sitting 
down hearty-like, sitting down like Englishmen 
and — and celebrating. First, find how much 
money they'd got, same as Sir John said; that 
was right and proper. Then if so be as they 
wanted to leave the rest to him, well he'd be proud 
to do his best for them. They knew him. Do 
fair by him and he'd do fair by them. Soon as he 
knew how much money they'd got, and how many 
were going to sit down, then he could get to work. 
That was all he'd got to say about celebrations. 

The enthusiasm was tremendous. But the Vi- 
car looked anxious, and whispered to the Squire. 
The Squire shrugged his shoulders and murmured 
something, and the Vicar rose. They would be 
all glad to hear, he said, glad but not surprised, 
that with his customary generosity the Squire 
had decided to throw open his own beautiful 
gardens and pleasure-grounds to them on Peace 



A Village Celebration 143 

Day and to take upon his own shoulders the bur- 
den of entertaining them. He would suggest that 
they now give Sir John three hearty cheers. This 
was done, and the proceedings closed. 



A Train of Thought 

ON the same day I saw two unsettling an- 
nouncements in the papers. The first said 
simply, underneath a suitable photograph, that 
the ski-ing season was now in full swing in Swit- 
zerland; the second explained elaborately why it 
cost more to go from London to the Riviera and 
back than from the Riviera to London and back. 
Both announcements unsettled me considerably. 
They would upset anybody for whom the um- 
brella season in London was just opening, and 
who was wondering what was the cost of a return 
ticket to Manchester. 

At first I amused myself with trying to decide 
whether I should prefer it to be the Riviera or 
Switzerland this Christmas. Switzerland won; 
not because it is more invigorating, but because 
I had just discovered a woollen helmet and a pair 
of ski-ing boots, relics of an earlier visit. I am 
thus equipped for Switzerland already, whereas 
for the Riviera I should want several new suits. 
One of the chief beauties of Switzerland (other 

144 



A Train of Thought 145 

than the mountains) is that it is so uncritical of 
the visitor's wardrobe. So long as he has a black 
coat for the evenings, it demands nothing more. 
In the day-time he may fall about in whatever he 
pleases. Indeed, it is almost an economy to go 
there now and work off some of one's moth-col- 
lecting khaki on it. The socks which are impos- 
sible with our civilian clothes could renew their 
youth as the middle pair of three, inside a 
pair of ski-ing boots. 

Yet to whichever I went this year, Switzerland 
or the Riviera, I think it would be money wasted. 
I am one of those obvious people who detest an 
uncomfortable railway journey, and the journey 
this year will certainly be uncomfortable. But 
I am something more than this; I am one of those 
uncommon people who enjoy a comfortable rail- 
way journey. I mean that I enjoy it as an enter- 
tainment in itself, not only as a relief from the 
hair-shirts of previous journeys. I would much 
sooner go by wagonlit from Calais to Monte 
Carlo in twenty hours, than by magic carpet in 
twenty seconds. I am even looking forward 
to my journey to Manchester, supposing that there 
is no great rush for the place on my chosen day. 
The scenery as one approaches Manchester may 



146 If I May 

not be beautiful, but I shall be quite happy in my 
corner facing the engine. 

Nowhere can I think so happily as in a train. 
I am not inspired; nothing so uncomfortable as 
that. I am never seized with a sudden idea for 
a masterpiece, nor form a sudden plan for some 
new enterprise. My thoughts are just pleasantly 
reflective, I think of all the good deeds I have 
done, and (when these give out) of all the good 
deeds I am going to do. I look out of the window 
and say lazily to myself, "How jolly to live 
there"; and a little farther on, "How jolly not to 
live there." I see a cow, and I wonder what it 
is like to be a cow, and I wonder whether the 
cow wonders what it is to be like me; and per- 
haps, by this time, we have passed on to a sheep, 
and I wonder if it is more fun being a sheep. 
My mind wanders on in a way which would an- 
noy Pelman a good deal, but it wanders on quite 
happily, and the "clankety-clank" of the train 
adds a very soothing accompaniment. So sooth- 
ing, indeed, that at any moment I can close my 
eyes and pass into a pleasant state of sleep. 

But this entertainment which my train provides 
for me is doubly entertaining if it be but the 
overture to greater delights. If some magic 
property which the train possesses — whether it be 



A Train of Thought 147 

the motion or the clankety-clank — makes me happy 
even when I am only thinking about a cow, is 
it any wonder that I am happy in thinking about 
the delightful new life to which I am travelling? 
We are going to the Riviera, but I have had 
no time as yet in which to meditate properly upon 
that delightful fact. I have been too busy sav- 
ing up for it, doing work in advance for it, buy- 
ing clothes for it. Between London and Dover 
I have been worrying, perhaps, about the cross- 
ing; between Dover and Calais my worries have 
come to a head; but when I step into the train at 
Calais, then at last I can give myself up with a 
whole mind to the contemplation of the happy 
future. So long as the train does not stop, so 
long as nobody goes in or out of my carriage, 
I care not how many hours the journey takes. I 
have enough happy thoughts to fill them. 

All this, as I said, is not at all Pelman's Idea 
of success in life; one should be counting cows 
instead of thinking of them; although presum- 
ably a train journey would seem in any case a 
waste of time to The Man Who Succeeds. But 
to those of us to whom it is no more a waste 
of time than any other pleasant form of enter- 
tainment, the train-service to which we have had 
to submit lately has been doubly distressing. The 



148 If I May 

bliss of travelling from London to Manchester 
was torn from us and we were given purgatory 
instead. Things are a little better now in Eng- 
land; if one chooses the right day one can still 
come sometimes upon the old happiness. Bu! 
not yet on the Continent. In the happy days be- 
fore the war the journey out was almost the best 
part of Switzerland on the Riviera. I must wait 
until those days come back again. 



Melodrama 

THE most characteristic thing about a melo- 
drama is that it always begins at 7.30. 
The idea, no doubt, is that one is more in the 
mood for this sort of entertainment after a high 
tea than after a late dinner. Plain living leads 
to plain thinking, and a solid foundation of eggs 
and potted meat leaves no room for appreciation 
of the finer shades of conduct; Right is obviously 
Right, and Wrong is Wrong. Or it may be also 
that the management wishes to allow us time 
for recovery afterwards from the emotions of 
the evening; the play ends at 10.30, so that we 
can build up the ravaged tissues again with a 
hearty supper. But whatever the reason for the 
early start, the result is the same. We arrive 
at 7.45 to find that we alone of the whole au- 
dience have been left out of the secret as to why 
Lord Algernon is to be pushed off the pier. 

For melodrama, unlike the more fashionable 
comedy, gets to grips at once. It is well under- 
stood by every dramatist that a late-dining au- 

149 



150 If I May 

dience needs several minutes of dialogue before 
it recovers from its bewilderment at finding itself 
in a theatre at all. Even the expedient of print- 
ing the names of the characters on the programme 
in the order in which they appear, and of letting 
them address each other frankly by name as soon 
as they come on the stage, fails to dispel the 
mists. The stalls still wear that vague, flustered 
look, as if they had expected a concert or a prize- 
fight and have just remembered that the concert, 
of course, is to-morrow. For this reason a wise 
dramatist keeps back his story until the brain of 
the more expensive seats begins to clear, and he 
is careful not to waste his jokes on the first five 
pages of his dialogue. 

But melodrama plays to cheap seats, and the 
purchaser of the cheap seat has come there to 
have his money's worth. Directly the curtain 
goes up he is ready to collaborate. It is per- 
fectly safe for the Villain to come on at once and 
reveal his dastardly plans; the audience is alert 
for his confidences. 

"Curse that young cub, Dick Vereker, what 
ill-fortune has sent him across my path? Already 
he has established himself in the affections of 
Lady Alicia, and if she consents to wed him my 
plans are foiled. Fortunately she does not know 



Melodrama 151 

as yet that, by the will of her late Uncle Gregory, 
the ironmaster, two million pounds are settled 
upon the man who wins her hand. With two 
million pounds I could pay back my betting losses 
and prevent myself from being turned out of the 
Constitutional Club. And now to put the marked 
ace of spades in young Vereker's coat-tail pocket. 
Ha!" 

No doubt the audience is the more ready to as- 
similate this because it knew it was coming. As 
soon as the Villain steps on to the stage he is 
obviously the Villain; one does not need to peer 
at one's programme and murmur, "Who is this, 
dear?" It is known beforehand that the Hero 
will be falsely accused, and that not until the last 
act will he and his true love come together again. 
All that we are waiting to be told is whether it is 
to be a marked card, a forged cheque, or a blood- 
stain this time; and (if, as is probable, the Hero- 
ine is forced into a marriage with the Villain) 
whether the Villain's first wife, whom he had 
deserted, will turn up during the ceremony or im- 
mediately afterwards. For the whole charm of a 
melodrama is that it is in essentials just like every 
other melodrama that has gone before. The 
author may indulge his own fancies to the extent 
of calling the Villain Jasper or Eustace, of letting 



152 If I May 

the Hero be ruined on the battle-field or the Stock 
Exchange, but we are keeping an eye on him to 
see that he plays no tricks with our national 
drama. It is our play as well as his, and we have 
laid down the rules for it. Let the author stick 
to them. 

It is strange how unconvincing the Hero is to 
his fellows on the stage, and how very convincing 
to us. That ringing voice, those gleaming eyes 
— how is it that none of his companions seems 
able to recognize Innocence when it is shining 
forth so obviously? "I feel that I never want 
to see your face again," says the Heroine, when 
the diamond necklace is found in his hat-box, and 
we feel that she has never really seen it at all yet. 
"Good Heavens, madam," we long to cry, "have 
you never been to a melodrama that you can be so 
deceived? Look again! Is it not the face of the 
Falsely Accused?" But probably she has not been 
to a melodrama. She moves in the best society, 
and the thought of a high tea at 6.30 would 
appal her. 

But let me confess that we in the audience are 
carried away sometimes by that ringing voice, 
those gleaming eyes. He has us, this Hero, in 
the hollow of his hand (to borrow a phrase from 
the Villain). When the limelight is playing 



Melodrama 153 

round his brow, and he stands in the centre of 
the stage with clenched fists, oh ! then he has us. 
"What! Betray my aged mother for filthy gold!" 
he cries, looking at us scornfully as if it was our 
suggestion. "Never, while yet breath remains 
in my body!" What a cheer we give him then; 
a cheer which seems to imply that, having often 
betrayed our own mothers for half a crown or 
so, we are able to realize the heroic nature of his 
abstention on this occasion. For in the presence 
of the Hero we lose our sense of values. If he 
were to scorn an offer to sell his father for vivi- 
sectional purposes, we should applaud enthusias- 
tically his altruism. 

But it is only the Hero who wins our cheers, 
only the Villain who wins our hisses. The minor 
characters are necessary, but we are not greatly 
interested in them. The Villain must have a con- 
federate to whom he can reveal his wicked 
thoughts when he is tired of soliloquizing; the 
Hero must have friends who can tell each other 
all those things which a modest man cannot say 
for himself; there must be characters of lower 
birth, competent to relieve the tension by sitting 
down on their hats or pulling chairs from beneath 
their acquaintances. We could not do without 
them, but we do not give them our hearts. Even 



154 If I May 

the Heroine leaves us calm. However beautiful 
she be, she is not more than the Hero deserves. 
It is the Hero whom we have come out to see, and 
it is painful to reflect that in a little while he will 
be struggling to get on the 'bus for Walham 
Green, and be pushed off again just like the rest 
of us. 



A Lost Masterpiece 

THE short essay on "The Improbability of 
the Infinite" which I was planning for you 
yesterday will now never be written. Last night 
my brain was crammed with lofty thoughts on the 
subject — and for that matter, on every other 
subject. My mind was never so fertile. Ten 
thousand words on any theme from Tin-tacks to 
Tomatoes would have been easy to me. That 
was last night. This morning I have only one 
word in my brain, and I cannot get rid of it. 
The word is "Teralbay." 

Teralbay is not a word which one uses much 
in ordinary life. Rearrange the letters, however, 
and it becomes such a word. A friend — no, I can 
call him a friend no longer — a person gave me 
this collection of letters as I was going to bed and 
challenged me to make a proper word of it. He 
added that Lord Melbourne — this, he alleged, is 
a well-known historical fact — Lord Melbourne 
had given this word to Queen Victoria once, and 
it had kept her awake the whole night. After 

155 



156 If I May 

this, one could not be so disloyal as to solve It 
at once. For two hours or so, therefore, I 
merely toyed with it. Whenever I seemed to be 
getting warm I hurriedly thought of something 
else. This quixotic loyalty has been the undoing 
of me; my chances of a solution have slipped by, 
and I am beginning to fear that they will never 
return. While this is the case, the only word I 
can write about Is Teralbay. 

Teralbay — what does It make? There are 
two ways of solving a problem of this sort. The 
first Is to waggle your eyes and see what you get. 
If you do this, words like "alterably" and "lab- 
oratory" emerge, which a little thought shows 
you to be wrong. You may then waggle your 
eyes again, look at it upside down or sideways, 
or stalk it carefully from the southwest and plunge 
upon It suddenly when it Is not ready for you. 
In this way It may be surprised into giving up its 
secret. But If you find that It cannot be cap- 
tured by strategy or assault, then there is only 
one way of taking It. It must be starved Into sur- 
render. This will take a long time, but victory 
is certain. 

There are eight letters In Teralbay and two 
of them are the same, so that there must be 
181,440 ways of writing the letters out. This may 



A Lost Masterpiece 157 

not be obvious to you at once; you may have 
thought that it was only 181,439; but you may 
take my word for it that I am right. (Wait a mo- 
ment while I work it out again. . . . Yes, that's 
it.) Well, now suppose that you put down a new 
order of letters — such as "raytable" — every six 
seconds, which is very easy going, and suppose that 
you can spare an hour a day for it; then by the 
303rd day — a year hence, if you rest on Sundays 
— you are bound to have reached a solution. 

But perhaps this is not playing the game. This, 
I am sure, is not what Queen Victoria did. And 
now I think of it, history does not tell us what she 
did do, beyond that she passed a sleepless night. 
(And that she still liked Melbourne afterwards 
— which is surprising.) Did she ever guess it? 
Or did Lord Melbourne have to tell her in the 
morning, and did she say, "Why, of course/" I 
expect so. Or did Lord Melbourne say, "I'm 
awfully sorry, madam, but I find I put a *y' In 
too many?" But no — history could not have re- 
jnained silent over such a tragedy as that. Be- 
sides, she went on liking him. 

When I die "Teralbay" will be written on my 
heart. While I live it shall be my telegraphic 
address. I shall patent a breakfast food called 
"Teralbay"; I shall say "Teralbay!" when I 



158 If I May 

miss a 2-ft. putt; the Teralbay carnation will 
catch your eye at the Temple show. I shall write 
anonymous letters over the name. "Fly at once; 
all is discovered — Teralbay.'' Yes, that would 
look rather well. 

I wish I knew more about Lord Melbourne. 
What sort of words did he think of? The thing 
couldn't be "aeroplane" or "telephone" or "goo- 
gly," because these weren't invented in his time. 
That gives us three words less. Nor, probably, 
would it be anything to eat; a Prime Minister 
would hardly discuss such subjects with his Sov- 
ereign. I have no doubt that after hours of im- 
mense labour you will triumphantly suggest "rate- 
ably." I suggested that myself, but it is wrong. 
There is no such word In the dictionary. The 
same objection applies to "bat-early" — it ought 
to mean something, but it doesn't. 

So I hand the word over to you. Please do 
not send the solution to me, for by the time you 
read this I shall either have found it out or else 
I shall be in a nursing home. In either case it 
will be of no use to me. Send it to the Post- 
master-General or one of the Geddeses or Mary 
Pickford. You will want to get it off your mind. 

As for myself I shall write to my fr , to 

the person who first said "Teralbay" to me, and 



A Lost Masterpiece 159 

ask him to make something of "sabet" and "donu- 
reb." When he has worked out the corrections 
— which, in case he gets the wrong ones, I may 
tell him here are "beast" and "bounder" — I shall 
search the dictionary for some long word like 
"intellectual." I shall alter the order of the let- 
ters and throw in a couple of "g's" and a "k". 
And then I shall tell them to keep a spare bed 
for him in my nursing home. 

Well, I have got "Teralbay" a little off my 
mind. I feel better able now to think of other 
things. Indeed, I might almost begin my famous 
essay on "The Improbability of the Infinite." It 
would be a pity for the country lo lose such a 
masterpiece — she has had quite enough trouble 
already what with one thing and another. For 
my view of the Infinite is this : that although be- 
yond the Finite, or, as one might say, the Com- 
mensurate, there may or may not be a 

Just a moment. I think I have it now. T — 
R— A No. . . . 



A Hint for Next Christmas 

THERE has been some talk lately of the stan- 
dardization of golf balls, but a more urgent 
reform Is the standardization of Christmas pres- 
ents. It Is no good putting this matter off; let 
us take It In hand now, so that we shall be In 
time for next Christmas. 

My crusade Is on behalf of those who spend 
their Christmas away from home. Last year I 
returned (with great difficulty) from such an 
adventure and I am more convinced than ever 
that Christmas presents should conform to a 
certain standard of size. My own little offerings 
were thoughtfully chosen. A match-box, a lace 
handkerchief or two, a cigarette-holder, a pencil 
and note-book. Gems from Wilcox, and so on; 
such gifts not only bring pleasure (let us hope) 
to the recipient, but take up a negligible amount 
of room In one's bag, and add hardly anything 
to the weight of It. Of course. If your fellow- 
visitor says to you, "How sweet of you to give 
me such a darling little handkerchief — it's just 

i6d 



di 



A Hint for Next Christmas i6i 

what I wanted — how ever did you think of it?'* 
you do not reply, "Well, it was a choice between 
that and a hundredweight of coal, and I'll give 
you two guesses why I chose the handkerchief." 
No; you smile modestly and say, "As soon as I 
saw it, I felt somehow that it was yours"; after 
which you are almost in a position to ask your 
host casually where he keeps the mistletoe. 

But it is almost a certainty that the presents 
you receive will not have been chosen with such 
care. Probably the young son of the house has 
been going in for carpentry lately, and in return 
for your tie-pin he gives you a wardrobe of his 
own manufacture. You thank him heartily, you 
praise its figure, but all the time you are wishing 
that it had chosen some other occasion. Your 
host gives you a statuette or a large engraving; 
somebody else turns up with a large brass candle- 
stick. It is all very gratifying, but you have 
got to get back to London somehow; and, thank- 
ful though you are not to have received the boar- 
hound or parrot-in-cage which seemed at one time 
to be threatening, you cannot help wishing that 
the limits of size for a Christmas present had 
been decreed by some authority who was familiar 
with the look of your dressing-case. 

Obviously, too, there should be a standard 



i62 If I May 

value for a certain type of Christmas present. 
One may give what one will to one's own family 
or particular friends; that is all right. But in a 
Christmas house-party there is a pleasant inter- 
change of parcels, of which the string and the 
brown paper and the kindly thought are the really 
important ingredients, and the gift inside is 
nothing more than an excuse for these things. 
It is embarrassing for you if Jones has apologized 
for his brown paper with a hundred cigars, and 
you have only excused yourself with twenty-five 
cigarettes; perhaps still more embarrassing if it 
is you who have lost so heavily on the exchange. 
An understanding that the contents were to be 
worth five shillings exactly would avoid this em- 
barrassment. 

And now I am reminded of the ingenuity of a 
friend of mine, William by name, who arrived 
at a large country house for Christmas without 
any present in his bag. He had expected neither 
to give nor to receive anything, but to his horror 
he discovered on the 24th that everybody was 
preparing a Christmas present for him, and that 
it was taken for granted that he would require 
a little privacy and brown paper on Christmas 
Eve for the purpose of addressing his own offer- 
ings to others. He had wild thoughts of tele- 



A Hint for Next Christmas 163 

graphing to London for something to be sent 
down, and spoke to other members of the house- 
party in order to discover what sort of presents 
would be suitable. 

"What are you giving our host?" he asked one 
of them. 

"Mary and I are giving him a book," said John, 
referring to his wife. 

William then approached the youngest son 
of the house, and discovered that he and his 
next brother Dick were sharing in this, that, and 
the other. When he had heard this, William 
retired to his room and thought profoundly. 

He was the first down to breakfast on Christ- 
mas morning. All the places at the table were 
piled high with presents. He looked at John's 
place. The top parcel said, "To John and Mary 
from Charles." William took out his fountain- 
pen and added a couple of words to the inscrip- 
tion. It then read, "To John and Mary from 
Charles and William," and in William's opinion 
looked just as effective as before. He moved 
on to the next place. "To Angela from Father," 
said the top parcel. "And William," wrote Wil- 
liam. At his hostess' place he hesitated for a 
moment. The first present there was for "Dar- 
ling Mother, from her loving children." It did 



i64 If I May 

not seem that an "and William" was quite suit- 
able. But his hostess was not to be deprived of 
William's kindly thought; twenty seconds later the 
handkerchiefs "from John and Mary and Wil- 
liam" expressed all the nice things which he was 
feeling for her. He passed on to the next 
place. . . . 

It is, of course, impossible to thank every 
donor of a joint gift; one simply thanks the first 
person whose eye one happens to catch. Some- 
times William's eye was caught, sometimes not. 
But he was spared all embarrassment; and I can 
recommend his solution of the problem with per- 
fect confidence to those who may be in a similar 
predicament next Christmas. 

There is a minor sort of Christmas present 
about which also a few words must be said; I re- 
fer to the Christmas card. 

The Christmas card habit is a very pleasant 
one, but it, too, needs to be disciplined. I doubt 
if many people understand Its proper function. 
This is partly the result of our bringing up; as 
children we were allowed (quite rightly) to run 
wild in the Christmas card shop, with one of two 
results. Either we still run wild, or else the re- 
action has set in and we avoid the Christmas card 
shop altogether. We convey our printed wishes 



A Hint for Next Christmas 165 

for a happy Christmas to everybody or to nobody. 
This is a mistake. In our middle-age we should 
discriminate. 

The child does not need to discriminate. It has 
two shillings in the hand and about twenty-four 
relations. Even in my time two shillings did not 
go far among twenty-four people. But though 
presents were out of the question, one could get 
twenty-four really beautiful Christmas cards for 
the money, and if some of them were ha'penny 
ones, then one could afford real snow on a three- 
penny one for the most important uncle, meaning 
by "most important," perhaps (but I have for- 
gotten now) , the one most likely to be generous 
in return. Of the fun of choosing those twenty- 
four cards I need not now speak, nor of the best 
method of seeing to It that somebody else paid 
for the necessary twenty-four stamps. But cer- 
tainly one took more trouble In suiting the tastes 
of those who were to receive the cards than the 
richest and most leisured grown-up would take in 
selecting a diamond necklace for his wife's stock- 
ing or motor-cars for his sons-in-law. It was not 
only a question of snow, but also of the words In 
which the old, old wish was expressed. If the 
aunt who was known to be fond of poetry did not 
get something suitable from Eliza Cook, one 



i66 If I May 

might regard her Christmas as ruined. How 
could one grudge the trouble necessary to make 
her Christmas really happy for her? One might 
even explore the fourpenny box. 

But in middle-age — by which I mean anything 
over twenty and under ninety — one knows too 
many people. One cannot give them a Christ- 
mas card each; there is not enough powdered 
glass to go round. One has to discriminate, and 
the way in which most of us discriminate is either 
to send no cards to anybody or else to send them 
to the first twenty or fifty or hundred of our 
friends (according to our income and energy) 
whose names come into our minds. Such cards 
are meaningless; but if we sent our Christmas 
cards to the right people, we could make the 
simple words upon them mean something very 
much more than a mere wish that the recipient's 
Christmas shall be "merry" (which it will be 
anyhow, if he likes merriness) and his New Year 
*'bright" (which, let us hope, it will not be). 

"A merry Christmas," with an old church In 
the background and a robin in the foreground, 
surrounded by a wreath of holly-leaves. It might 
mean so much. What I feel that it ought to 
mean is something like this : — 



A Hint for Next Christmas 167 

"You live at Potters Bar and I live at Peters- 
ham. Of course, if we did happen to meet at the 
Marble Arch one day, it would be awfully jolly, 
and we could go and have lunch together some- 
where, and talk about old times. But our lives 
have drifted apart since those old days. It is 
partly the fault of the train-service, no doubt. 
Glad as I should be to see you, I don't like to 
ask you to come all the way to Petersham to din- 
ner, and if you asked me to Potters Bar — well, I 
should come, but it would be something of a 
struggle, and I thank you for not asking me. Be- 
sides, we have made different friends now, and 
our tastes are different. After we had talked 
about the old days, I doubt if we should 
have much to say to each other. Each of 
us would think the other a bit of a bore, 
and our wives would wonder why we had ever 
been friends at Liverpool. But don't think I 
have forgotten you. I just send this card to let 
you know that I am still alive, still at the same 
address, and that I still remember you. No need, 
if we ever do meet, or if we ever want each 
other's help, to begin by saying: 'I suppose you 
have quite forgotten those old days at Liverpool.' 
We have neither of us forgotten; and so let us 



i68 If I May 

send to each other, once a year, a sign that we have 
not forgotten, and that once upon a time we 
were friends. 'A merry Christmas to you.' " 

That is what a Christmas card should say. It 
is absurd to say this to a man or woman whom 
one is perpetually ringing up on the telephone; 
to somebody whom one met last week or with 
whom one is dining the week after; to a man 
whom one may run across at the club on almost 
any day, or a woman whom one knows to shop 
daily at the same stores as oneself. It is absurd 
to say it to a correspondent to whom one often 
writes. Let us reserve our cards for the old 
friends who have dropped out of our lives, and 
let them reserve their cards for us. 

But, of course, we must have kept their ad- 
dresses; otherwise we have to print our cards 
publicly — as I am doing now. "Old friends will 
please accept this, the only intimation." 



The Future 

THE recent decision that, if a fortune-teller 
honestly believes what she is saying, she is 
not defrauding her client, may be good law, but 
it does not sound like good sense. To a layman 
like myself it would seem more sensible to say 
that, if the client honestly believes what the for- 
tune-teller is saying, then the client is not being 
defrauded. 

For instance, a fortune-teller may inform you, 
having pocketed your two guineas, that a rich 
uncle in Australia is going to leave you a million 
pounds next year. She doesn't promise you the 
million pounds herself; obviously that is coming 
to you anyhow, fortune-teller or no fortune- 
teller. There is no suggestion on her part that 
she is arranging your future for you. All that 
she promises to do for two guineas is to give you 
a little advance information. She tells you that 
you are coming into a million pounds next year, 
and if you believe it, I should say that it was 
well worth the money. You have a year's happi- 

169 



170 If I May 

ness (if that sort of thing makes you happy), a 
year in which to tell yourself in every trouble, 
"Never mind, there's a good time coming"; a 
year in which to make glorious plans for the fu- 
ture, to build castles in the air, or (if your taste 
is not for castles) country cottages and Mayfair 
flats. And all this for two guineas; it is amaz- 
ingly cheap. 

And now consider what happens when the year 
is over. The fortune-teller has done her part; 
she has given you a year's happiness for two 
guineas. It is now your uncle's turn to step for- 
ward. He is going to give you twenty years* 
happiness by leaving you a million pounds. Prob- 
ably he doesn't; he hasn't got a million pounds 
to leave; he has, in fact, just written to you to 
ask you to lend him a fiver. Well, surely it is the 
uncle who has let you down, not the fortune- 
teller. Curse him by all means, cut him out of 
your will, but don't blame the fortune-teller, who 
fulfilled her part of the contract. The only rea- 
son why you went to her was to get your happiness 
in advance. Well, you got it in advance ; and see- 
ing that it was the only happiness you got, her 
claim on your gratitude shines out the more 
clearly. You might decently send her another 
guinea. 



The Future 171 

This is the case if you honestly believe your 
fortune-teller. Now let us suppose that you don't 
believe. It seems to me that in this case you are 
entitled to the return of your money. 

Of course, I am not supposing that you are a 
complete sceptic about these things. It is plainly 
impossible for a fortune-teller to defraud a 
sceptic, otherwise than by telling him the truth. 
For if a sceptic went to consult the crystal, and 
was told that he would marry again before the 
month was out, when in fact he was a bachelor, 
then he has not been defrauded, for he is now in 
a position to tell all his friends that fortune-tell- 
ing is absolute nonsense — on evidence for which 
he deliberately paid two guineas. Indeed, it is 
just on this ground that police prosecutions seem 
to me to fail. For a policeman (suitably dis- 
guised) pays his money simply for the purpose of 
getting evidence against the crystal-gazer. Hav- 
ing got his evidence, it is ridiculous of him to pre- 
tend that he has been cheated. But if he wasted 
two guineas of the public money, and was told 
nothing but the truth about himself and his family, 
then he could indeed complain that the money 
had been taken from him under false pretences. 

However, to get back to your own case. You, 
we assume, are not a sceptic. You believe that 



172 If I May 

certain inspired people can tell your future, and 
that the fee which they ask for doing this is a 
reasonable one. But on this particular occasion 
the spirits are not working properly, and all that 
emerges is that your uncle in Australia 

But with the best will in the world you can- 
not believe this. The spirits must have got mixed; 
they are slightly under-proof this morning; you 
have no uncle. The fortune-teller gives you her 
word of honour that she firmly believes you to 
have at least three uncles in Australia, one of 

whom will shortly leave you a mill It is no 

good. You cannot believe it. And it seems to 
me that on the morning's transaction you have 
certainly been defrauded. You must insist on "a 
tall dark man from India" at the next sitting. 

It is "the tall dark man" which the amateur 
crystal-gazer really wants. He doesn't want the 
future. There is so little to foretell in most 
of our lives. Nobody is going to pay two guineas 
to be told that he will be off his drive next Sat- 
urday and have a stomach-ache on the following 
Monday. He wants something a little more 
romantic than that. Even if he is never going 
to be influenced by a tall dark man from India, 
it makes life a little more interesting to be told 
that he is going to be. 



The Future 173 

For the average man finds life very uninter- 
esting as it is. And I think that the reason why 
he finds it uninteresting is that he is always wait- 
ing for something to happen to him instead of 
setting to work to make things happen. For one 
person who dreams of earning fifty thousand 
pounds, a hundred people dream of being left 
fifty thousand pounds. I imagine that if a young 
man went to a crystal-gazer and was told that he 
would work desperately hard for the next twenty 
years, and would by that time have earned (and 
saved) a fortune, he would be very disappointed. 
Probably he would ask for his money back. 



The Largest Circulation 

THERE died recently a gentleman named 
Nat Gould, twenty million copies of whose 
books had been sold. They were hardly ever re- 
viewed in the literary papers; advertisements of 
them rarely appeared; no puffs nor photographs 
of the author were thrust upon one. Unostenta- 
tiously he wrote them — five in a year — and his 
million public was assured to him. It is perhaps 
too late now to begin to read them, but we can- 
not help wondering whence came his enormous 
popularity. 

Mr. Gould, as all the world knows, wrote rac- 
ing novels. They were called, Won by a Neck, or 
Lost by a Head, or Odds On, or The Stable-lad's 
Dilemma. Every third man in the Army carried 
one about with him. I was unluckv in this matter, 
for all my men belonged to the other two-thirds; 
they read detective stories about a certain Sexton 
Blake, who kept bursting into rooms and finding 
finger-marks. In your innocence you may think 
that Sherlock Holmes is the supreme British de- 

174 



The Largest Circulation 175 

tective, but he Is a child to Blake. If I learnt 
nothing else In the Army, I learnt that. Possibly 
these detective stories were a side-line of Mr. 
Gould's, or possibly my regiment was the one 
anti-Gould regiment in the Army. At any rate, I 
was demobilized without any acquaintance with 
the Won by a Neck stories. 

There must be something about the followers 
of racing which makes them different from the fol- 
lowers of any other sport. I suppose that I am 
at least as keen on the Lunch Scores as any other 
man can be on the Two-thirty Winner; yet I 
have no desire whatever to read a succession of 
stories entitled How's That, Umpire? or Run 
Out, or Lost by a Wicket. I can waste my time 
and money with as much pleasure on the golf- 
course as Mr. Gould's readers can on the race- 
course, but those great works. Stymied and The 
Foozle on the Fifth Tee, leave me cold. My 
lack of interest in racing explains my lack of in- 
terest in racing novels, but why Is there no twenty 
million public for Off-side and Fouled on the 
Touchline? It is a mystery. 

Though I have never read a racing novel, I 
can imagine it quite easily. Lord Newmarket's 
old home is mortgaged, mortgaged everywhere. 
His house is mortgaged, his park is mortgaged, 



176 If I May 

his stud is mortgaged, his tie-pin is mortgaged; 
yet he wants to marry Lady Angela. How can 
he restore his old home to its earlier glories? 
There is only one chance. He must put his shirt 
(the only thing that isn't mortgaged) on Fido 
for the Portland Vase. Fido is a rank outsider — 
most of the bookmakers thought that he was a 
fox-terrier, not a horse — and he is starting at a 
thousand to one. When the starting-gate goes 
up, Fido will carry not only Lord Newmarket's 
shirt, but Lady Angela's happiness. Was there 
ever such a race before in the history of racing? 
Only in the five thousand other racing novels. But 
Lord Newmarket is reckoning without Rupert 
Blacknose. Blacknose has not only sworn to wed 
Lady Angela, but it is he who holds the mort- 
gages on Lord Newmarket's old home. It is at 
Newmarket Villa that he means to settle down 
when he is married. If Fido wins, his dreams 
are shattered. At dead of night he climbs into 
Fido's stable, and paints him white with a few 
black splotches. Surely now he will be disquali- 
fied as a fox-terrier! He climbs out again, laugh- 
ing sardonically to himself. . . . The day of the 
great race dawns. The Portland Vase ! Who 
has not heard of it? In the far-away Malay 
Archipelago ... in the remotest parts of the 



The Largest Circulation 177 

Australian bush ... in West Kensington . . . 
etc., etc. Anyway, the downs were black with 
people, and the stands were black with more peo- 
ple, and the paddock was packed with black peo- 
ple. But of all these people none concealed be- 
neath a mask of impassivity a heart more anxious 
than Lord Newmarket's. He wandered restlessly 
into the weighing-room. He weighed himself. 
He had gone down a pound. He wandered out 
again. The downs were still black with humanity. 
Then came a hoarse cry from twenty thousand 
throats. "They're of!" 

Yes, well, Mr. Gould's novels are probably bet- 
ter than that. But it is a terrifying thought that 
he wrote a hundred and thirty of them. A hun- 
dred and thirty times he described that hoarse 
cry from twenty thousand throats, "They're off !" 
A hundred and thirty times he described the 
downs black with humanity, and the grandstand, 
and the race itself, and what the bookmakers 
were saying, and the scene in the paddock. How 
did he do it? Had he a special rubber stamp for 
all these usual features, which saved him the 
trouble of writing them every time? Or did he 
come quite fresh to it with each book? He wrote 
five of them every year; did he forget in March 
what he said in January, only to forget in June 



178 If I May 

and visualize the scene afresh? To describe a 
race-course a hundred thirty times — what a man ! 
Yet perhaps, after all, it is not difficult to un- 
derstand why he was so popular, why he had a 
following even greater than Mr. Garvice. Mr. 
Garvice wrote love-stories, stories of that sweet 
and fair young English girl and that charming, 
handsome, athletic young Englishman. Every 
one who is not yet in love, or who is unhappily 
married, dreams of meeting one or the other, and 
to read such stories transports the loveless for a 
moment into the land where they would be. But 
then there are many more moneyless people in 
the world than loveless; many more people who 
want money than who want love. It is these peo- 
ple who are transported by Mr. Nat Gould. He 
does not (I imagine) write of the stern-chinned, 
silent millionaire who has forced his way to the 
top by solid grit; we have no hopes of getting 
rich that way. But he does (I imagine) write of 
the lucky fellow who puts his shirt both ways on 
an outsider and pulls off a cool thousand. Well, 
that might happen to any of us. It never has 
yet . . . but five times a year Mr. Gould carried 
us away from the world where it never has into 
that beautiful dream-world where it happens 
.quite naturally. No wonder that he was popular. 



The Watson ToucK 

THERE used to be a song which affirmed 
(how truly, I do not know) that every nice 
girl loved a sailor. I am prepared to state, 
though I do not propose to make a song about it, 
that every nice man loves a detective story. 

This week I have been reading the last ad- 
ventures of Sherlock Holmes — I mean really the 
last adventures, ending with his triumph over the 
German spy in 19 14. Having saved the Empire, 
Holmes returned to his farm on the Sussex 
downs, and there, for all I mind, he may stay. I 
have no great affection for the twentieth-century 
Holmes. But I will give the warmest welcome to 
as many adventures of the Baker Street Holmes 
as Watson likes to reconstruct for us. There is 
no reason why the supply of these should ever 
give out. "It was, I remember, at the close of 
a winter's day in 1894" — when Watson begins 
like this, then I am prepared to listen. 

Fortunately, all the stories in this last book, 
with the exception of the very indifferent spy 

179 



i8o If I May 

story, are of the Baker Street days, the days when 
Watson said, "Holmes, this is marvellous!" 
Reading them now — with, I suppose, a more criti- 
cal mind than I exhibited twenty years ago — I 
see that Holmes was not only a great detective, 
but a very lucky one. There is an occasion when 
he suddenly asks the doctor why he had a Turkish 
bath. Utterly unnerved, Watson asks how he 
knew, to which the great detective says that it is 
as obvious as is the fact that the doctor had 
shared a hansom with a friend that morning. But 
when Holmes explains further, we see how lucky 
he is. Watson, he says, has some mud on his 
left trouser; therefore he sat on the left side of 
a hansom; therefore he shared it with a friend, 
for otherwise he would have sat in the middle. 
Watson's boots, he continues, had obviously been 
tied by a stranger; therefore he has had them off 
in a Turkish bath or a boot shop, and since the 
newness of the boots makes it unlikely that he has 
been buying another pair, therefore he must have 
been to a Turkish bath. "Holmes," says Watson, 
"this is marvellous !" 

Marvellously lucky, anyway. For, however 
new his boots, poor old Watson might have been 
buying a pair of pumps, or bedroom slippers, or 
tennis shoes that morning, or even, if the practice 



The Watson Touch i8i 

allowed such extravagance, a second pair of 
boots. And there was, of course, no reason what- 
ever why he should not have sat at the side of 
his hansom, even if alone. It is much more com- 
fortable, and is, in fact, what one always did in 
the hansom days, and still does In a taxi. So if 
Holmes was right on this occasion, he was right 
by luck and not by deduction. 

But that must be the best of writing a detective 
story, that you can always make the lucky shots 
come off. In no other form of fiction, I imagine, 
does the author feel so certainly that he is the 
captain of the ship. If he wants it so, he has it 
so. Is the solution going to be too easy? Then 
he puts in an unexpected footprint in the gera- 
nium bed, or a strange face at the window, and 
makes it more difficult. Is the reader being kept 
too much in the dark? Then a conversation over- 
heard in the library will make it easier for him. 
The author's only trouble is that he can never be 
certain whether his plot is too obscure or too ob- 
vious. He knows himself that the governess is 
guilty, and, in consequence, she can hardly raise 
her eyebrows without seeming to him to give the 
whole thing away. 

There was a time when I began to write a de- 
tective story for myself. My murder, I thought, 



i82 If I May 

was rather cleverly carried out. The villain sent 
a letter to his victim, enclosing a stamped ad- 
dressed envelope for an answer. The gum of the 
envelope was poisoned. I did not know, nor did 
I bother to find out, whether It was possible, but 
this, as I said just now, is the beauty of writing a 
detective story. If there Is no such quick-working 
poison, then you invent one. If up to the moment 
when the doubt occurs to you, your villain had 
been living in Brixton, you Immediately send him 
to Central Africa, where he extracts a poison 
from a "deadly root" according to the prescrip- 
tion of the chief medicine-man. ("It is the poison 
into which the Swabiji dip their arrows," you tell 
the reader casually, as if he really ought to have 
known It for himself.) Well, then, I Invented 
my poison, and my villain put It on the gum of a 
self-addressed envelope, and enclosed It with a 
letter asking for his victim's autograph. He then 
posted the letter, whereupon a very tragic thing 
happened. 

What happened was that, having left the letter 
In the post for some years while I formed fours 
and saluted, I picked up a magazine in the Mess 
one day and began to read a detective story. It 
was a very baffling one, and I really didn't see 
how the murderer could possibly have committed 



The Watson Touch 183 



=>? 



his foul deed. But the detective was on to it at 
once. He searched the wastepaper basket, and, 
picking an envelope therefrom, said "Ha !" It 
was just about then that I said "Hal" too, and 
also other things, for my half-finished story was 
now useless. Somebody else had thought of the 
same idea. But though I was very sorry for this, 
I could not help feeling proud that my idea made 
such a good story. Indeed, since then I have fan- 
cied myself rather as a detective-story-writer, and 
if only I could think of something which nobody 
else would think of while I was thinking of it, 
I would try again. 



Some Old Companions 

IN the days of the last-war-but-thirty-seven, 
when (as you will remember) the Peers were 
fighting the People, Lord Curzon defended the 
hereditary system by telling us that it worked very 
well in India, where a tailor's son invariably be- 
came a tailor. The obvious answer, if anyone 
bothered to give it, was that the tailor's son, hav- 
ing had his career mapped out for him at birth, 
presumably prepared to be a tailor, whereas a 
peer's eldest son, as far as one observed, did not 
prepare to be a statesman. Indeed, the only pro- 
fession in this country to which one is apprenticed 
in one's childhood is that of royalty. The future 
King can begin to learn the "tactful smile," the 
"memory for faces," the knowledge of foreign 
languages and orders, almost as soon as he be- 
gins to learn anything. He alone need not re- 
gret his youth and say, "If only I had been taught 
this, that, and the other instead!" 

These gloomy reflections have been forced on 
me by the re-discovery of all those educational 

184 



Some Old Companions 185 

books which I absorbed, or was supposed to have 
absorbed, at school and college. They made an 
imposing collection when I had got them all to- 
gether; fifty mathematical works by eminent men, 
from a well-thumbed, dog's-eared Euclid to a 
clean uncut copy of Functions of a Quaternion. 
It is doubtful if you even know what a quaternion 
is, still less how it functions; probably you think 
of it as a small four-legged animal with a hard 
shell. You may be right — it is so long since I 
bought the book. But once I knew all about 
quaternions; kept them, possibly, at the boftom 
of the garden; and now I ask myself in Latin 
(for I learnt Latin too), ''Ciii bono?" How 
much better if I had learnt this, that, and the 
other instead! 

History for instance. How useful a knowl- 
edge of history would be to me now. To lighten 
an article like this with a reference to what Gari- 
baldi said to Cavour in '53; to round off a sen- 
tence with the casual remark, "As was the custom 
in Alexander's day"; to trace back a religious 
tendency, or a fair complexion, or the price of 
boots to some barbarian invasion of a thousand 
years ago — how delightfully easy it would be, I 
tell myself, to write with such knowledge at one's 
disposal. One would never be at a loss for a 



i86 If I May 

subject, and plots for stories, plays, and historical 
novels would be piled up in one's brain for the 
choosing. But what can one do with mathematics 
— save count the words of an article (when writ- 
ten) with rather more quickness and accuracy 
than one's fellow writer? Did I spend ten years 
at mathematics for this? The waste of it I 

But perhaps those years were not so wasted as 
they seem to have been. Not only Functions of a. 
Quaternion, but other of these books, chatty 
books about hydro-mechanics and dynamics of a 
particle (no, not an article — that might have 
been helpful — a particle), gossipy books about 
optics and differential equations, many of these 
have a comforting air of cleanness; as if, having^ 
bought them at the instigation of my instructor, 
I had felt that this was enough, and that their 
mere presence in my bookcase was a sufficient 
talisman; a talisman the more effective because 
my instructor had marked some of the chapters 
"R" — meaning, no doubt, ''Read carefully" — and 
other chapters "RR" or "Read twice as care-^ 
fully/' For these seem to be the only marks in 
some of the books, and there are no traces of 
midnight oil nor of that earnest thumb which 
one might expect from the perspiring seeker after 
knowledge. 



Some Old Companions 187 

So I feel — indeed, I seem to remember — that 
the years were not so wasted after all. When I 
should have been looking after my quaternions, I 
was doing something else, something not so use- 
ful to one who would be a mathematician, but per- 
haps more useful to a writer who had already 
learnt enough to count the words In an article and 
to estimate the number of guineas due to him. But 
whether this be so or not, at least I have another 
reason for gratitude that I treated some of these 
volumes so reverently. For I have now sold them 
all to a secondhand bookseller, and he at least 
was influenced by the clean look of those which I 
had placed upon the top. 

So they stand now, my books, in a shelf outside 
the shop waiting for a new master. Fifteen shil- 
lings I paid for some of them, and you or anybody 
else can get them for three and sixpence, with my 
autograph inside and the "R" and "RR" of some 
of our most learned mathematicians. I should like 
to hear from the purchaser, and to know that he is 
giving my books as kind a home as I gave them, 
treating them as reverently, exercising them as 
gently. He can never be a mathematician, or 
anything else, unless he has them on his shelves, 
but let him not force his attentions upon them. 



i88 If I May 

Left to themselves they will exert their own in- 
fluence. 

I shall wonder sometimes what he is going to 
be, this young fellow who is now reading the 
books on which I was brought up. Spurred on by 
the differential equations, will he decide to be a 
lawyer, or will the dynamics of a particle help 
him to realize his ambition of painting? Well, 
whatever he becomes, I wish him luck. And when 
he sells the books again, may he get a better price 
than I did. 



A Haunted House 

WE have been trying to hide it from each 
other, but the truth must now come out. 
Our house is haunted. 

Well, of course, anybody's house might be 
haunted. Anybody might have a headless ghost 
walking about the battlements or the bath-room 
at midnight, and if it were no more than that, I 
should not trouble you with the details. But our 
house is haunted in a peculiar way. No house 
that I have heard of has ever been affected in 
quite this way before. 

I must begin by explaining that it is a new 
house, built just before the war. (Before the 
war, not after; this is a true story.) Its first 
and only tenant was a Mrs. Watson-Watson, who 
lived here with her daughter. Add her three 
servants, and you have filled the house. No doubt 
she could have stowed people away in the cellar, 
but I have never heard that she did; she preferred 
to keep it for such coal and wood as came her 
way. When Mrs. Watson-Watson decided six 

189 



190 If I May 



n 



months ago to retire to the country, we took the 
house, and have lived here since. And very com- 
fortably, except for this haunting business. 

As was to be expected, we were busy for the 
first few weeks in sending on Mrs. Watson-Wat- 
son's letters. Gradually, as the news of her re- 
moval got round to her less intimate friends, the 
flow of them grew less, and at last — to our great 
relief, for we were always mislaying her address 
— it ceased altogether. It was not until then that 
we felt ourselves to be really in possession of our 
house. 

We were not in possession for long. A month 
later a letter arrived for Lady Elizabeth MuUins. 
Supposing this to be a nom-de-guerre of Mrs. 
Watson-Watson's, we searched for, and with 
great difficulty found, the missing address, and 
sent the letter on. Next day there were two more 
letters for Lady Elizabeth; by the end of the 
week there were half a dozen ; and for the rest of 
that month they came trickling in at the rate of 
one a day. Mrs. Watson-Watson's address was 
now definitely lost, so we tied Lady-Elizabeth's 
letters up in a packet and sent them to the ground- 
landlord's solicitors. Solicitors like letters. 

It was annoying at this time, when one was 
expecting, perhaps, a very important cheque or 



A Haunted House 191 

communication from the Prime Minister, to go 
downstairs eagerly at the postman's knock and 
find a couple of letters for Lady Elizabeth and a 
belated copy of the Church Times for Mrs. Wat- 
son-Watson. It was still more annoying, that, 
just when we were getting rid of Lady Elizabeth, 
Mr. J. Garcia should have arrived to take her 
place. 

Mr. Garcia seems to be a Spaniard. At any 
rate, most of his letters came from Spain. This 
makes it difficult to know what to do with them. 
There was something clever in Spanish on the 
back of the last one, which may be the address 
to which we ought to return it, but on the other 
hand, may be just the Spanish for "Always faith- 
ful" or "Perseverance" or "Down with the 
bourgeoisie." He seems to be a busier person 
than Lady Elizabeth. Ten people wrote to him 
the other week, whereas there were never more 
than seven letters in a week for her ladyship. 

Until lately, I have always been annoyed by 
the fact that there is no Sunday post in London. 
To come down to breakfast knowing that on this 
morning anyhow there is no chance of an O.B.E. 
takes the edge off one's appetite. But lately, I 
have been glad of the weekly respite. For one 
day in seven I can do without the excitement of 



192 If I May 

wondering whether there will be three letters for 
Mr. Garcia this morning, or two for Lady Eliza- 
beth, or three for Lady Elizabeth, or one for 
Mrs. Watson-Watson. I will gladly let my own 
correspondence go in order to be saved from 
theirs. But on Sunday last, about tea-time, there 
came a knock at the front-door and the unmis- 
takable scuffle of a letter being pushed through 
the slit and dropping into the hall. My senses are 
now so acute in this matter, that I can almost dis- 
tinguish the scuffle of a genuine Garcia from that 
of a MuUins or even a Watson-Watson. There 
was a novelty about this arrival which was inter- 
esting. I went into the hall, and saw a letter on 
the floor, unstamped and evidently delivered by 
hand. It was inscribed to Sir John Poling. 

Will somebody offer an explanation? I have 
given you our story — leaving out as accidental, 
and not of sufficient historic interest, the post- 
card to the Countess of Westbury and the obvious 
income-tax form to Colonel Todgers, C.B. — and 
I feel that it is up to you or the Psychical Research 
Society or somebody to tell us what it all means. 

My own explanation is this. I think that our 
house is haunted by ghosts, but by the ghosts of 
living persons only, and that these ghosts are vis- 
ible to outsiders, but invisible to the inmates. 



A Haunted House 195 

Thus Mr. Lopez, while passing down our street, 
suddenly sees J. Garcia looking at him from our 
drawing-room window. "Caramba!" he says, "I 
thought he was in Barcelona." He makes a note 
of the address, and when he gets back to Spain 
writes long letters to Garcia begging him to come 
back to his Barcelonian wife and family. At an- 
other time somebody else sees Sir John Poling 
letting himself in at the front door with a latch- 
key. "So that's where he lives now," she says to 
herself, and spreads the news among their mutual 
friends. Of course, this is very annoying for 
us, and one cannot help wishing that these ghosts 
would confine themselves to one of the back bed- 
rooms. Failing this, they might leave some kind 
of address in indelible letters on the bath-mat. 

Another explanation is that our address has 
become in some way a sort of typical address, 
just as "Thomas Atkins" became the typical sol- 
dier for the purpose of filling up forms, and "John 
Doe" the typical litigant. When a busy woman 
puts our address on an envelope beneath the name 
of Lady Elizabeth Mullins, all she means is that 
Lady Elizabeth lives somewhere, and that 
the secretary had better look up the proper ad- 
dress and write it in before posting the letter. 
Every now and then the secretary forgets to do 



194 If I May 

this, and the letter comes here. This may be a 
compliment to the desirability of our house, but 
it is a compliment of which we are getting tired. 
I must ask that it should now cease. 



Round the World and Back 

A FRIEND of mine is just going off for his 
holiday. He is having a longer holiday 
than usual this time. Instead of his customary 
three weeks, he is having a year, and he is going 
to see the world. He begins with India. Prob- 
ably some of our Territorials will wonder why 
he wants to see India particularly. They would 
gladly give him all of it. However, he is deter- 
mined to go, and I cannot do less than wish him 
luck and a safe return. 

There are several places to which I should be 
glad to accompany him, but India is not one of 
them. Kipling ruined India for me, as I suspect 
he did for many other of his readers. I picture 
India as full of intriguing, snobbish Anglo- 
Indians, who are always damning the Home Gov- 
ernment for ruining the country. It is an odd 
thing that, although I have lived between thirty 
and forty years in England, nobody believes that 
I know how to govern England, and yet the 
stupidest Anglo-Indian, who claims to know all 

195 



196 If I May 

about the proper government of India because 
he has lived there ten or twenty years, is beheved 
by quite a number of people to be speaking with 
authority. No doubt my friend will have the de- 
cisive word in future in all his arguments on In- 
dian questions with less travelled acquaintances. 
But he shall not get round me. 

From India he goes to China, and thither I 
would follow him with greater willingness, albeit 
more tremulously. I can never get it out of my 
head that the Chinese habitually torture the in- 
quiring visitor. Probably I read the wrong sort 
of books when I was young. One of them, I 
remember, had illustrations. No doubt they were 
illustrations of medireval implements; no doubt 
I am as foolish as the Chinaman would be who 
had read about the Tower of London and feared 
to disembark at Folkstone; but it Is hard to dispel 
these early impressions. "Yes, yes," I should say 
rather hastily, as they pointed out the Great Wall 
to me, and I should lead the way unostentatiously 
but quite definitely towards Japan. 

Before deciding how long to stay in Japan, one 
would have to ask oneself what one wants from 
a strange country. I think that the answer in my 
case is "Scenery." The customs of Japan, or 
Thibet, or Utah are interesting, no doubt, but one 



Round the World and Back 197 

can be equally interested in a description of them. 
The people of these countries are interesting, but 
j^hen I have by no means exhausted my interest in 
the people of England, and five minutes or five 
months among an entirely new set of people is 
not going to help me very much. But a five- 
second view of (say) the Victoria Falls is worth 
acres of canvas or film on the subject, and as 
many gallons of ink as you please. So I shall go 
to Japan for what I can see, and (since it is so 
well worth seeing) remain there as long as I 
can. 

I am not sure where we go next. New Zea- 
land, if the holiday were mine; for I have al- 
ways believed New Zealand to be the most beauti- 
ful country in the world. Also it is from all 
accounts a nice clean country. If I were to ar- 
range a world-tour for myself, instead of follow- 
ing some other traveller about in imagination, 
my course would be settled, not, in the first place, 
by questions of climate or scenery or the larger 
inhabitants, but by consideration of those smaller 
natives — the Tarantula, the Scorpion, and the 
Centipede. If I were told that in such-and-such 
a country one often found a lion in one's bath, 
I might be prepared to risk. it. I should feel that 
there was always a chance that the lion might not 



198 If I May 

object to me. But if I heard that one might find 
a tarantula in one's hotel, then that country would 
be barred to me for ever. For I should be dead 
long before the beast had got to close quarters; 
dead of disgust. 

This is why South America, which always looks 
so delightful on the map, will never see me. I 
have had to give up most of Africa, India 
(though, as I have said, this is a country which 
I can spare), the West Indies, and many other 
places whose names I have forgotten. In a world 
limited to inhabitants with not more than four 
legs I could travel with much greater freedom. 
At present the two great difficulties in my way are 
this insect trouble, and (much less serious, but 
still more important) the language trouble. You 
can understand, then, how it is that, since also it 
is a beautiful country, I look so kindly on New 
Zealand. 

But I doubt if I could be happy even in a dozen 
New Zealands, each one more beautiful than the 
last, seeing that it would mean being away from 
London for a year. The number of things which 
might happen in the year while one was away! 
The new plays produced, the literary and politi- 
cal reputations made and lost, a complete cricket 
championship fought out; in one's over-anxious 



Round the World and Back 199 

mind there would never be such a year as the 
year which one was missing. My friend may retain 
his calm as he hears of our distant doings in Kip- 
lingized India, but it would never do for me. Even 
to-day, after a fortnight in the country, I am be- 
ginning to get restless. Really, I think I ought 
to get back to-morrow. 



The State of the Theatre 

WE are told that the theatre is in a bad way, 
that the English Drama is dead, but I 
suspect that every generation in its turn has been 
told the same thing. I have been reading some 
old numbers of the Theatrical Magazine of a 
hundred years ago. These were the palmy days 
of the stage, when blank verse flourished, and 
every serious play had to begin like this: 

Scene. A place without. Rinaldo discovered 

dying. Enter Marco. 
Mar. What ho, Rinaldo! Lo, the horned 
moon 
Dims the cold radiance of the wester- 
ing stars. 
Pale sentinels of the approaching 

dawn. 
How now, Rinaldo? 
Rin. Marco, I am dying. 

Struck down by Tomasino's treacher- 
ous hand. 
Mar. What, Tomasino? 

200 



The State of the Theatre 201 

Rin. Tomaslno. Ere 

The flaming chariot of Phoebus 

mounts 
The vaults of Heaven, Rinaldo will 
be dead. 

Mar. Oh, horror piled on horror! Lo, the 
moon 

And so on. The result was called — and I 
think rightly — "a tragedy." The alternative to 
these tragedies was a farce, in which everybody 
went to an inn and was mistaken for somebody 
else (causing great fun and amusement), the heat 
and burden of the evening resting upon a humor- 
ous man-servant called Trickett (or something 
good like that). And whether the superior peo- 
ple of the day said that English Drama was dead, 
I do not know; but they may be excused for hav- 
ing thought that, if it wasn't dead, it ought to 
have been. 

Fortunately we are doing better than that to- 
day. But we are not doing as well as we should 
be, and the reason generally given is that we have 
not enough theatres. No doubt we have many 
more theatres than we had a hundred years ago, 
even if you only count those which confine them- 
selves to plays without music, but the mass-effect 
of all these music-hall-theatres is to make many 



202 If I May 

people think and say that English Drama is 
(once more) dead. 

It is customary to blame the manager for this 
— the new type of manager, the Mr. Albert de 
Lauributt who has been evolved by the war. He 
existed before the war, of course, but he limited 
his activities to the music-hall. Now he spreads 
himself over half a dozen theatres, and produces 
a revue or a musical comedy at each. He does not 
care for Art, but only for Money. He would be 
just as proud of a successful production of Kiss 
Me, Katie, as of Hamlet; and, to do him justice, 
as proud of a successful production of Hamlet, as 
of Kiss Me, Katie. But by "successful" he means 
"financially successful" ; no more and no less. He 
is frankly out for the stuff, and he thinks that it 
is musical comedy which brings in the stuff. 

It seems absurd to single him out for blame, 
when there are so many thousands of other people 
in the world who are out for the stuff. Why 
should Mr. Albert de Lauributt lose two thou- 
sand pounds over your or my serious play, when 
he can make ten thousand over Hu^ me, Harriet? 
We do not blame other rich men for being as little 
quixotic with their money. We do not expect a 
financier to back a young inventor because he is 
a genius, in preference to backing some other in- 



The State of the Theatre 203 

ventor because he has discovered a saleable, 
though quite inartistic, breakfast food. So if Mr. 
de Lauributt produces six versions in his six dif- 
ferent theatres of Cuddle Me, Constance, it is 
only because this happens to be his way of mak- 
ing money. He may even be spending his own eve- 
nings secretly at the "Old Vic." For he runs his 
theatre, not as an artist, but as a business man; 
and, as any business man will tell you, "Business 
is business, my boy." 

We cannot blame him then. But we can regret 
that he is allowed to own six different theatres. 
In Paris it is "one man, one theatre," and if it 
were so in London then there would be less the 
matter with the English Drama. But, failing such 
an enactment, all that remains is to persuade the 
public that what it really wants is something a 
little better than Kiss Me, Katie. For Mr. de 
Lauributt is quite ready to provide Shakespeare, 
Ibsen, Galsworthy, modern drama, modern com- 
edy, anything you like as long as it brings him in 
pots of money. And he would probably do the 
thing well. He would have the sense to know 
that the producer of Hug Me, Harriet, would not 
be the best possible producer of The Wild Duck; 
he would try to get the best possible producer 
and the best possible designer and the best pos- 



204 If I May 

sible cast, knowing that all these would help to 
bring in the best possible box-office receipts. Yes, 
he would do the thing well, if only the public 
really asked for it. 

How can the public ask for it? Obviously it 
can only do this by staying away from Cuddle 
Me, Constance, and visiting instead those plays 
whose authors take themselves seriously, when- 
ever such plays are available. It should be the 
business, therefore, of the critics (the people who 
are really concerned to improve the public taste 
in plays) to lead the public in the right direction; 
away, that is, from the Bareback Theatre, and 
towards those theatres whose managers have 
other than financial standards. But it is unfortu- 
nately the fact that they don't do this. Without 
meaning it, they lead the public the wrong way. 

They mislead them simply because they have 
two standards of criticism — which the public does 
not understand. They go to the Bareback The- 
atre for the first night of Kiss Me, Katie, and 
they write something like this: — 

"Immense enthusiasm. ... A feast of colour 
to delight the eye. Mr. Albert de Lauributt has 
surpassed himself. . . . Delightfully catchy 
music. . . . The audience laughed continuously. 
. . . Mr. Ponk, the new comedian from America, 



The State of the Theatre 205 

was a triumphant success. . . . Ravishing Miss 
Rosie Romeo was more ravishing than ever. . . . 
Immense enthusiasm." 

On the next night they go to see Mr. A. W. 
Galsbarrie's new play, Three Men. They write 
like this: — 

"Our first feeling is one of disappointment. 
. . . Certainly not Galsbarrie at his best. . . . 
The weak point of the play is that the character 
of Sir John is not properly developed. ... A 
perceptible dragging in the Third Act. ... It 
is a little difficult to understand why. . . . We 
should hardly have expected Galsbarrie to have 
. . . The dialogue is perhaps a trifle lacking 
in . . . Mr. Macready Jones did his best with 
the part of Sir John, but as we have said . . . 
Mr. Kean-Smith was extremely unsuited to the 
part of George. . . . The reception, on the 
whole, was favourable." 

You see the difference? Of course there is 
bound to be a difference, and Mr. A. W. Gals- 
barrie would be very much disappointed if there 
were not. He understands the critic's feeling, 
which is simply that Kiss Me, Katie, is not worth 
criticizing, and that Three Men most emphati- 
cally is. But it is not surprising that the plain 
man-in-the-street, who has saved up in order to 



2o6 If I May 

take his girl to one of the two new plays of the 
week, and is waiting for the reviews to appear 
before booking his seats, should come to the con- 
clusion that Three Men seems to be a pretty rot- 
ten play, and that, tired though they are of musi- 
cal comedy. Kiss Me, Katie, is evidently some- 
thing rather extra special which they ought not 
to miss. 

Which means pots more money for Mr. Al- 
bert de Lauributt. 



The Fires of Autumn 

THE most important article of furniture in 
any room is the fireplace. For half the 
year we sit round it, warming ourselves at its 
heat; for the other half of the year we continue 
to sit round it, moved thereto by habit and the 
position of the chairs. Yet how many people 
choose their house by reason of its fireplaces, or, 
having chosen it for some other reason, spend 
their money on a new grate rather than on a new 
sofa or a grand piano? Not many. 

For one who has so chosen his house the light- 
ing of the first fire is something of a ceremony. 
But in any case the first fire of the autumn is a 
notable event. Much as I regret the passing of 
summer, I cannot help rejoicing in the first 
autumn days, days so cheerful and so very much 
alive. By November the freshness has left them; 
one's thoughts go backwards regretfully to 
August or forwards hopefully to April; but while 
October lasts, one can still live in the present. 
It is in October that one tastes again the delights 

207 



2o8 If I May 



of the fireside, and finds them to be even more 
attractive than one had remembered. 

But though I write "October," let me confess 
that, Coal Controller or no Coal Controller, it 
was in September that I lit my first fire this year. 
Perhaps as the owner of a new and (as I think) 
very attractive grate I may be excused. There 
was some doubt as to whether a fireplace so de- 
lightful could actually support a fire, a doubt 
which had to be resolved as soon as possible. The 
match was struck with all solemnity; the sticks 
caught up the flame from the dying paper and 
handed it on to the coal; in a little while the coal 
had made room for the logs, and the first autumn 
fire was in being. 

Among the benefits which the war has brought 
to London, and a little less uncertain than some, 
is the log fire. In the country we have always 
burnt logs, with the air of one who was thus 
identifying himself with the old English manner, 
but in London never — unless i were those ship's 
logs, which gave off a blue flame and very little 
else, but seemed to bring the fact that we were 
an island people more closely home to us. Now 
wood fires are universal. Whether the air will be 
purer in consequence and fogs less common, let 
the scientist decide; but we are all entitled to the 



'! 



The Fires of Autumn 209 

opinion that our drawing-rooms are more cheer- 
ful for the change. 

However, if you have a wood fire, you must 
have a pair of bellows. I know a man who al- 
ways calls them "bellus," which is, I believe, the 
professional pronunciation. He also talks about 
a "hussif" and a "cold chisel." A cold chisel is 
apparently the ordinary sort of chisel which you 
chisel with; what a hot chisel is I never dis- 
covered. But whether one calls them "bellows" 
or "bellus," in these days one cannot do without 
them. They are as necessary to a wood fire as 
a poker is to a coal fire, and they serve much 
the same purpose. There is something very sooth- 
ing about poking a fire, even if one's companions 
point out that one is doing it all wrong, and offer 
an exhibition of the correct method. To play upon 
a wood fire with a bellows gives one the same 
satisfaction, and is just as pleasantly annoying to 
the onlookers. They alone know how to rouse 
the dying spark and fan it gently to a flame, until 
the whole log is a triumphant blaze again; you, 
they tell you, are merely blowing the whole thing 
out. 

It is necessary, then, that the bellows-makin;;; 
industry should revive. My impression is that a 
pair of bellows is usually catalogued under the 



210 If I May 

heading, "antique furniture," and I doubt if it is 
possible to buy a pair anywhere but in an old 
furniture shop. There must be a limit to the 
number of these available, a limit which has very 
nearly been reached. Here is a chance for our 
ironmongers (or carpenters, or upholsterers, or 
whoever have the secret of it). Let them get to 
work before we are swamped with German bel- 
lows. It is no use to offer us pokers with which 
to keep our log fires burning; we must have wind. 
There is one respect in which I must confess 
that the coal fire has the advantage of the wood 
fire. If your favourite position is on the hearth- 
rug with your back to whatever is burning, your 
right hand gesticulating as you tell your hearers 
what is wrong with the confounded Government, 
then it does not greatly matter what brings you 
that pleasant dorsal warmth which inspires you 
to such eloquence. But if your favourite position 
is in an armchair facing the fire, and your cus- 
tomary habit one of passive thought rather than 
of active speech, then you will not get those visions 
from the burning wood which the pictures in a 
coal fire bring you. There are no deep, glow- 
ing caverns in the logs from which friendly faces 
wink back at you as your head begins gently to 



The Fires of Autumn 211 

nod to them. Perhaps it is as well. These are 
not the days for quiet reflection, but for action. 
At least, people tell me so, and I am very glad to 
hand on the information.. 



Not Guilty 

AS I descended the stairs to breakfast, the 
maid was coming up. 

"A policeman to see you, sir," she said, in a 
hushed voice. "I've shown him into the library." 

"Thank you," I answered calmly, just as if I 
had expected him. 

And in a sense, I suppose, I had expected him. 
Not particularly this morning, of course; but I 
knew that the day was bound to come when I 
should be arrested and hurried off to prison. 
Well, it was to be this morning. I could have 
wished that it had been a little later in the day, 
when I had more complete command of myself. 
I wondered if he would let me have my break- 
fast first before taking me away. It is impossible 
for an arrested man to do himself justice on an 
empty stomach, but after breakfast he can play 
the part as it should be played. He can "pre- 
serve a calm exterior" while at the same time 
"hardly seeming to realize his position"; he can 
"go quietly" to the police-station and "protest 

212 



Not Guilty 213 

that he has a complete answer to the charge." He 
can, In fact, do all the things which I decided to 
do as I walked to the library — if only I was al- 
lowed to have my breakfast first. 

As I entered the library, I wondered what it was 
that I had done; or, rather, what it was that I 
had looked as if I were doing. For that is my 
trouble — that I look guilty so easily. I never 
cash a cheque at the bank but I expect to feel a 
hand on my shoulder and to hear a stern voice 
saying, "You cummer longer me." If I walk 
through any of the big stores with a parcel In my 
hand I expect to hear a voice whispering in my 
ear, "The manager would like to see you quietly 
In his office." I have never forged or shoplifted In 
my life, but the knowledge that a real forger or 
shoplifter would try to have the outward appear- 
ance of a man as innocent as myself helps to give 
me the outward appearance of a man as guilty as 
he. When I settle a bill by cheque, my "face-of- 
a-man-whose-account-Is-already-overdrawn" can 
be read across the whole length of the shop as 
soon as I enter the door. Indeed, It Is so ex- 
pressive that I had to give up banking at Cox's 
during the war. 

"Good morning," said the policeman. "I 
thought I'd better tell you that I found your din- 



214 If I May 

ing-room window open at six o'clock this morn- 
ing when I came on duty." 

"Oh!" I said, rather disappointed. 

For by this time I had prepared my speech from 
the dock, and it seemed a pity to waste it. There 
is no part quite so popular as that of the Wrongly 
Accused. Every hero of every melodrama has 
had to meet that false accusation at some moment 
during the play; otherwise we should not know 
that he was the hero. I saw myself in the dock, 
protesting my innocence to the last; I saw myself 
entering the witness box and remaining unshaken 
by the most relentless cross-examination; I saw 
my friends coming forward to give evidence as to 
my unimpeachable character. . . . 

And yet, after all, what could one's friends say? 
Imagine yourself in the dock, on whatever charge 
It may be, and Imagine this and that friend com- 
ing forward to speak to you. What can they say? 

What do they know? They know that you are 
a bore or not a bore, a grouser or not a grouser, 
generous or mean, sentimental or cynical, an opti- 
mist or a pessimist, and that you have or have 
not a sense of humour. None of these is a crim- 
inal offence. Is there anything else that your 
friends can say about you which can establish the 
likelihood of your innocence? Not very much. 



Not Guilty 215 

Nor should we be flattered if there were. When 
somebody says of us, "Oh, I can read old Jones 
like a book; I know him inside and out — for the 
most straightforward, simple creature," we pro- 
test indignantly. But if somebody says, "There's 
a lot more in Jones than you think; I shall never 
quite understand him," then we look modestly 
down our nose and tell ourselves that we are 
Jones, the Human Enigma. Women have learnt 
all about this. They realize that the best way 
to flatter us is to say earnestly, with a shake of 
the head, "Your face is such a mask; I shall 
never know what you're really thinking." How 
that makes us purr! 

No, our friends cannot help us much, once we 
are in the dock. They will protest, good friends 
that they are, that we are utterly incapable of the 
crime of which we are accused (and in my case, 
of course, they will be right), but the jury will 
know that our friends do not really know; or at 
any rate the jury will guess that we have not 
asked those of our friends who did know to speak 
for us. We must rely on ourselves; on our speech 
from the dock; on our demeanour under cross- 
examination; on 

"Your dining-room window open," said the 
policeman reproachfully. 



2i6 If I May 

*'rm sorry," I said; "I won't leave it open 

again." 

Fortunately, however, they can't arrest you for 
it. So I led the way out of the library and opened 
the front door. The policeman went quietly. 



A Digression 

MY omnibus left the broad and easy way 
which leads to Victoria Station and 
plunged into the strait and narrow paths which 
land you into the river at Vauxhall if you aren't 
careful, and I peered over the back to have an- 
other look at its number. The road-mending sea- 
son is in full swing now, but no amount of road- 
mending could account for such a comprehensive 
compass as we were fetching. For a moment I 
thought that the revolution had begun. " 'Bus- 
ful of Bourgeoisie Kidnapped" would make a 
good head-line for the papers. Or perhaps it 
was merely a private enterprise. We were to be 
held for ransom in some deserted warehouse on 
the margin of the Thames, into which, if the 
money were not forthcoming, we should be 
dropped with a weight at the feet on some dark 
and lonely night. . . . Fortunately the con- 
ductor came up at this stage of the journey and 
said "Ennimorfairplees," whereupon I laid my 
fears before him and begged him to let me know 

217 



2i8 If I May 

the worst. He replied briefly, "Shorerpersher," 
and went down again. So that was it. 

Why is the Shah of Persia so popular? Even 
in these days when kings are two a penny, and 
there is a never-ending procession of Napoleons 
and Nelsons to the Guildhall to receive swords 
and freedoms and honorary degrees, the arrival 
of a Shah of Persia stirs the imagination of the 
man in the street. He feels something of the 
old thrill. But in the nineties, of course, we talked 
about nothing else for weeks. "Have you seen 
the Shah?" was the popular catch-phrase of the 
day; there were music hall songs about him; he 
was almost as important as a jubilee. 

It is curious that this should have been so, for 
a Shah of Persia is not really as important as 
that. There was never a catch-phrase, "Have 
you seen the French President?" or even "Have 
you seen the Tsar?" both of whom one would ex- 
pect to take precedence of a Persian ruler. But 
they are more commonplace people. The Shah 
makes his appeal, not on account of his impor- 
tance but on account of his romantic associations. 
He fills the mind with thoughts of uncut rubies, 
diamond-studded swords, Arab chargers, veiled 
houris, and the very best Persian sherbet. 
One does not stand outside Victoria in the hope 



A Digression 219 

of seeing any of these things in the carriage with 
him, but one feels that Is the sort of man he is, 
and that if only he could talk English like you or 
me, he could tell us a story worth the telling. 
"Hooray for the Shah!" 

Seated on my omnibus, and thinking of these 
things — (we had tacked by this time, and were 
beating up for PImlico) — I remembered suddenly 
a little personal incident in connexion with the 
visit of that earlier Shah which is not without its 
moral for all of us. It teaches us the lesson 
that — well, we can settle this afterwards. Any- 
way, here Is the story. 

The Shah of Persia was in England, and all 
England was talking about him. Naturally, we 
were talking about him at my private school. I 
was about nine at the time; it is not the age at 
which one knows much about high politics, but it 
is almost the only age when one really knows 
where Persia is. I have no doubt that we "did" 
Persia In that term, out of honour to the Shah. 
One result of all this talk in the school about the 
Persian Potentate was (as you might expect) 
that a certain boy was nicknamed "The Shah," 
presumably on account of some magnificence of 
person or costume. Now it happened that the 
school was busying itself just then over some elec- 



220 If I May 

tion — to the presidency of the Debating Society, 
or membership of the Games Committee, or some- 
thing of that sort — and "The Shah" was a very 
popular candidate. I was one of his humble but 
admiring supporters. 

Observe me, then, on the polling day, busily at 
work In a corner of the schoolroom, I am writ- 
ing In bold capitals on a piece of exercise paper, 
"vote for the shah." Having written It, I 
pinned It proudly up In a corner of the room, and 
stood back awhile to look at It. My first effort at 
electioneering. There was no immediate sensa- 
tion, for everybody else was too busy over his 
own affairs to notice my little poster, and so I 
went about from one little knot of talkers to 
another, hanging shyly on the outskirts In the 
hope that, when It broke up, I might lead the 
way casually towards my masterpiece — "vote 

FOR THE SHAH." 

Suddenly my attention was attracted to an- 
other boy, who, even as I had been a few minutes 
ago, was now busily writing. I kept my eye on 
him, and when he had finished his work, and was 
walking across the room with a piece of paper In 
his hand, I followed him eagerly. He was at 
least twelve; I was only nine. Can you wonder 
that he seemed to me almost the last word in 



A Digression 221 

wisdom? So I followed him. Could it really be 
that my poster had forstalled his? What glory 
if it were so ! He pinned up his notice. He moved 
away, and I read it. It said: "vote for the 

SHAR." 

You can imagine my feelings. I went hot all 
over. *'Shar," of course, not "Shah." How ever 
could I have been such an idiot as to have thought 
it was "Shah"? S-h-a-h obviously spelt shash, 
not shar. How nearly I had exposed my appal- 
ling ignorance to my fellows ! "Vote for the — "; 
I blushed again, hardly able to think of it. And 
oh ! how thankful I was now that everybody else 
had been too busy to read my poster. Hastily I 
went over to it, and tore it down; hastily I went 
back to my desk and wrote another poster. Ob- 
serve me now again. I am writing in bold capi- 
tals on a piece of exercise paper: "vote for the 

SHAR." 

And the moral? Well, my omnibus has now 
fetched its compass round Victoria, we are back 
on the main route again, and I think I must leave 
the moral to you* 



High Finance 

I KNOW very little about the Stock Exchange. 
I know, of course, that stockbrokers wear 
very shiny top-hats, which they remove when they 
sing "God Save the King," as they invariably do 
in a crisis. When they go out to lunch, the younger 
ones leave their top-hats behind them, and take 
the air with plastered polls; and after lunch is 
over, young and old alike have a round of dom- 
inoes before placing threepence under the coffee- 
cup and returning to business. If business is slack, 
they tell each other jokes, which get into the 
papers with some such introduction as, "A good 
story going the round of the Stock Exchange." 
Probably it was going the round of the nurseries 
in '72, but the stockbrokers have been so busy 
making Consols go up and down that they have 
not been able to listen to it before. Anyway, 
the careful man always avoids a good story which 
is going the round of the Stock Exchange. 

But apart from these minor activities of the 
City, the financial world has always been a mys- 



High Finance 223 

tery to me. To this day I do not understand why 
Consols go up and down. Perhaps they only go 
down now, but there was a time when they would 
be 78^ in the morning, 783^ after the Stock Ex- 
change had returned from its coffee, and 78 when 
it went out to play dominoes again. When they 
thudded down to 78, this proved that the Gov- 
ernment had lost the confidence of the country. 
But I never heard an explanation of it all which 
carried any conviction. 

Once I asked a noted financial authority to tell 
me all about it in words of one syllable. He did 
his best. He said it was "simply a question of 
supply and demand." In that case one would ex- 
pect umbrellas to go up and down according to 
the weather — I mean, of course, the price of 
umbrellas. But apparently umbrellas aren't so 
sensitive as stocks, which are the most sensitive 
things in the world. In the happy days before 
the war, when the President of Nicaragua sent 
a stiff note to the President of Uruguay, Consols 
immediately dropped a quarter of a point. The 
President of Uruguay answered, "Sorry, my mis- 
take," and Consols went back again. Evidently, 
several gentlemen, who would have bought Con- 
sols in the ordinary way on that Thursday, de- 
cided to buy Haricot Beans instead, as being, I 



224 If I May 

suppose, more useful in the event of a war be- 
tween Nicaragua and Uruguay. So Consols 
feeling the neglect, went down. But on the Fri- 
day, as soon as Uruguay had apologized, the 
gentlemen who had just sold the Haricot Beans 
hurried out to buy Consols, as being quite safe 
again now that there was no more chance of war. 
So Consols went cheerfully up again. You see? 

But the financial problem is getting very much 
more difficult than this. The vagaries of Consols, 
or even of the reputed gold-mine in which I once 
had shares — (this is a sad story, but, fortunately, 
when they had dropped to six-and-sixpence, there 
was a demand for them by a man called Wilkin- 
son, poor fellow, which arrested the fall just long 
enough for me to get out. They are now three 
a penny, so I hope Wilkinson found a demand, 
too) — well, then, even the vagaries of the West 
African market are a simple matter compared 
with the vagaries of the Exchange. The mystery 
of the mark, for instance, is so utterly beyond that, 
in trying to understand it, I do not even know 
where to begin. I see no mental foothold any- 
where. 

The mark, we are told, is now worth tuppence- 
ha'penny. Why? I mean, who said so? Who 
is it who arranges these things ? Is it Rockefeller 



High Finance 225 

or one of the Geddeses or Samuel Gompers — a 
superman of some kind? Or is it a Committee 
of the Stock Exchange and Greenwich Observ- 
atory? And how does it decide? Does it put a 
mark up for auction and see what the demand is 
like? Or does it decide on moral grounds? Does 
it say contemptuously, "Oh, I should think about 
tuppence-ha'penny, and serve 'em dashed well 
right for losing the war"? 

Let us go slowly, and see if we can make any 
sense of it. Suppose that I produce something 
worth a shilling, something, that is, which I can 
sell In this country for a shilling — a blank verse 
tragedy, say. Let us suppose also that, having 
received the shilling, I propose to buy a bag of 
nuts. A German offers me a mark for my 
tragedy. Now that mark has got to be spent in 
Germany by somebody; not, of course, necessarily 
by me. I probably hand it to Thomas Cook or 
his Son, who gives it to somebody else, who even- 
tually takes it back to Germany again. Obviously, 
then, what I have to consider, when I am offered 
a mark instead of the customary shilling for my 
blank verse, is this: "Can this mark purchase a 
similar-sized bag of nuts in Germany?" If the 
answer is "Yes," then the mark is worth a shil- 
ling; if the answer is that it will only buy a bag 



226 If I May 

of about a fifth of the English size, then the 
mark is worth tuppence-ha'penny. 

Well, is everything in Germany five times as 
dear as it is in England? No. Not by any 
means. If a mark is regarded as tuppence- 
ha'penny, everything is extraordinarily cheap; 
much cheaper than in England. Also It occurs to 
me suddenly that if this were the way in which 
the pundits decided upon the price of the mark 
and the franc and the peseta and the cowrie-shell, 
then the price of living In every country would be 
exactly the same, and we should have nowhere to 
retire to when the taxes were too high. Which 
would be absurd. So we must have done the sum 
wrong. Let us try again. 

The price of the mark (this is our new theory) 
depends on the amount of goods which Germany 
is exporting. A German offers me a mark for 
my tragedy, but if no other German has got any- 
thing to give me, or Thomas Cook or his Son, 
in exchange for that mark, then the mark Is ob- 
viously no good to us. If, then, we say that the 
mark is worth tuppence-ha'penny, we mean that 
Germany is importing (or buying) five times as 
much as she is exporting (or selling). Similarly, 
when the rouble was about ten a penny, Russia 
was Importing a hundred times as much as she 



High Finance 227 

was exporting. But she was not importing any- 
thing then because of the blockade. Therefore 
— no, it's no good. You see, we can't do it. We 
shall have to stand about on the Brighton road 
until one of those stockbrokers comes by. He 
will explain It to us. 

But perhaps a better man to consult In these 
matters of High Finance is the Strong Man whom 
we see so often upon the stage. Sometimes he 
builds bridges, and sometimes he makes steel, but 
the one I like best is the one who controls the 
markets of the world. He strides to the tele- 
phone and says grimly down it: "Sell Chilled 
Tomatoes. . . . No. , , . Yes. . . Keep on 
selling," and in far-away Nan-Kang-Foo a man 
shoots himself. He had too many Chilled To- 
matoes — or too few. 

But the Strong Man goes on his way. He is 
married to a young and beautiful girl, whom he 
has adored silently for years. He has never 
told her; partly because he thought It would not 
be fair to her, partly because he knows it would 
spoil the play. He Is too busy to see much of her, 
but sometimes they meet at dinner, and then he 
strokes her head and asks her kindly what she is 
doing that evening. Probably she is going out 
with George B. Pusher. What else could you ex- 



228 If I May 

pect? All the time when Staunton is buying To- 
matoes and Salmon and Tintacks and Locomo- 
tives and Peanuts and lots of things that he 
doesn't really want, George B. Pusher is in at- 
tendance on the Heroine. 

There is a terrible scene when Staunton dis- 
covers what is going on. Who is this puppy? 
George B. Pusher? That settles it. He will ruin 
Pusher. 

He sells Tomatoes. Pusher hasn't got any. 
He buys Raspberry Jam. Pusher doesn't want 
any. Damn the fellow, he refuses to be ruined. 
Everybody is shooting himself except Pusher. 

At last. Wire Netting! Why didn't he think 
of Wire Netting before? He buys all the Wire 
Netting that there is. Then he sells it all. 
George B. Pusher is ruined. He comes round to 
beg for mercy. 

Now, perhaps, if we listen very carefully, we 
shall understand how it is all done. 



Secret Papers 

THE cabinet, or whatever I am to call it, has 
looked stolidly at me from the corner of the 
library for years. It is nothing more than a row 
of pigeon-holes in which I keep my secret papers. 
At least, the man who sold it to me recommended 
it for this purpose, dwelling lovingly as he did so 
upon the strength of the lock. So I bought it — in 
those first days (how far away!) when I came 
to London to set the Thames on fire. 

It was not long before I lost the key. I made 
one or two half-hearted efforts to get into it with 
a button-hook; but, finding that the lock lived 
up to its reputation, I resigned myself to regard- 
ing it for the future as an article for ornament, 
not for use. In this capacity it has followed me 
about from house to house. As an ornament it 
is without beauty, and many people have urged 
me to throw it away. My answer has been that 
it contained my secret papers. Some day I would 
get a locksmith to open it, and we should see 
what we should see. 

229 



230 If I May 

The war being over, I came into the library 
and sat down at my desk. Perhaps it was not 
too late, even now, to set the Thames on fire. I 
would write an incendiary article on — what? 
The cabinet caught my eye. I went idly up to It 
and pulled at the drawers, before I remembered 
that it was locked. And suddenly I was annoyed 
with it for being locked; the more I pulled at it, 
the more I was annoyed ; and I ended up by telling 
It with some heat that, if it persisted In its defiant 
attitude, I would shoot it down with my revolver. 
(This Is how the hero breaks his way into the 
room wherein the heroine Is immured, and I have 
often envied him.) 

However, the revolver was not necessary. The 
lock surrendered, after a short struggle, to the 
poker. For the first time for seventeen years my 
secret papers were before me. Can you not imag- 
ine how eagerly I went through them? 

They were a strange collection, these trifles 
which had (I suppose) seemed so important to 
me seventeen years ago. There was the inevitable 
dance programme, covered with initials which 
must have stirred me delightfully once, but now 
left me cold. There was a receipt from a Cam- 
bridge tailor, my last outstanding Cambridge bill, 
perhaps — preserved as a sign that I was now free. 



Secret Papers 231 

There was a notice of a short-story competition, 
stones not to exceed 5000 words; another of a 
short-sketch competition, sketches not to exceed 
1200 words. Apparently I was prepared to write 
you anything in those days. There was an auto- 
graph of a famous man ; "Many thanks" and the 
signature on a postcard. I suppose I had told 
him that I admired his style, or that I proposed 
to model myself on him, or had bought his last 
book, or — who knows? At any rate, he had 
thanked me. 

There were letters from editors; editors whom 
I know well now, but who in those distant days 
addressed me as "Sir," and were mine faithfully. 
They regretted that they could not use the present 
contribution, but hoped that I would continue to 
write. I continued to write. Trusting that I 
would persevere, they were mine very truly. I 
persevered. Now they are mine ever. From 
what a long way off those letters have come. 
"Dear Sir," the Great Man wrote to me, and 
overawed I locked the precious letter up. Yes- 
terday I smacked him on the back. 

There was a list of my first fifteen contribu- 
tions to the Press. Three of them were accepted; 
two of the three appeared in a paper which imme- 
diately went bankrupt. For the fifteenth I seem 



232 If I May 

to have received fifteen shillings. A shilling an 
attempt, you see, for those early efforts to set 
the Thames on fire. Reading the titles of them, 
I am not surprised. One was called (I blush to 
record it) "The Diary of a Free-Lance." Was 
there ever a literary aspirant who did not begin 
with just such an article on just such a subject? — 
a subject so engagingly fresh to himself, so hack- 
neyed to the editor. I have returned a hundred of 
them since without a word of encouragement to 
the writers, blissfully forgetful of the fact (now 
brought to light) that I, too, had begun like that. 

And last of all. In this locked cabinet I came 
upon an actual contribution, one of the fifteen 
which had gone the rounds and had been put 
away, perhaps for a re-writing. . . . Dear, dear I 
I must have been very hopeful In those days. 
Youth and hope — I am afraid that those were 
my only qualifications for setting the Thames 
on fire. 

Yet I was very scornful of editors seventeen 
years ago. The outsider, I held forth, was not 
given a chance; the young writer with fresh ideas 
was cold-shouldered. Well, well! Reading this 
early contribution of mine seventeen years later, 
reading again what editors had to say about It, 
I am no longer scornful of them. I can only 



Secret Papers 233 

wonder why they hoped that I would go on 
writing. 

But I shall not throw the broken cabinet away, 
even though it is no longer available for secret 
papers. It must continue to sit in a corner of 
the library, a corrective against secret pride.; 










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